This is the season when the emails start. Your contract is ending; here’s your new rate, no action needed.
“No action needed” is true in the narrow sense that the lights stay on. It’s not the same as “this is a good deal,” and the letter isn’t claiming it is. It’s an offer from the company you’re already with. Treat it like one.
What the notice is, legally
The Public Utility Commission requires your retail electric provider to notify residential customers at least 30 days before the contract expires. That notice gives you a date, and the date is the thing worth circling.
Two rights hang off it. You can switch without an early-termination charge as long as the switch happens no earlier than 14 days before that expiration date. And if you do nothing at all, the commission says you’ll be served on a month-to-month product — which is a plan with no contract period where the price can change at the provider’s discretion.
So the real choice isn’t renew or don’t. It’s renew, switch, or drift. Drifting is a decision too, and it’s usually the expensive one.
How to check the offer in twenty minutes
Pull twelve months of your own bills first. Write down your highest month, your lowest month, and a typical one. You need your actual kilowatt-hours before any number anybody quotes you means anything.
Then read the Electricity Facts Label, not the headline rate. The commission’s rule requires the average price on a residential label at 500, 1,000, and 2,000 kilowatt-hours. Three numbers. The reason for three is that plans built around bill credits and usage thresholds can look wonderful at one usage level and ordinary at the others.
Find the label number closest to your real months. That’s your comparison, and it may not be the number in the subject line.
Then check what kind of plan it is. Fixed, variable, or indexed are three different products with three different risks, and the PUCT describes each of them separately. A renewal offer that quietly moves you from a fixed product to a variable one has changed the deal even if the first month’s price looks similar.
Then compare two or three alternatives on the same basis. Power to Choose is the commission’s own shopping site, and the PUCT is explicit that the site is neutral and doesn’t recommend a provider or a plan. Use it for offers, not for advice.
Is there a best month to shop?
People ask me this constantly, and the honest answer is unsatisfying: I don’t have a source that establishes one.
There’s no authoritative Texas study I can point to that identifies an optimal month or season across delivery territories, contract lengths, credit conditions, and whatever the market does next. What the state gives you instead is the deadline — the notice, the 14-day window, the right to leave without a penalty. Work the deadline you actually have rather than waiting for a month somebody promised you.
Anybody who tells you spring is always cheaper is telling you a story. It might even be a story with some history behind it. It isn’t a forecast.
One thing the comparison can’t move
When you line up offers, part of the number in front of you isn’t competitive at all.
The PUCT says delivery charges — the cost of moving power from the plant to your house — are regulated by the commission, and it publishes those charges by delivery company. As of September 1, 2026, the residential delivery portion of a 1,000-kilowatt-hour bill was $61.07 for AEP Central, $59.93 for AEP North, $69.03 for CenterPoint, $64.36 for Oncor, and $81.87 for Texas-New Mexico Power. The commission also says plainly that it does not set the final price a retail provider charges.
Two things follow. Your delivery company is set by your address, not your shopping. And a rate quoted to your cousin in another part of the state isn’t comparable to a rate quoted to you, because part of it was never the same number.
About those complaint scores
If you use Power to Choose you’ll see complaint ratings next to providers. They’re worth a glance and not worth a decision.
The PUCT’s own scorecard says it “should be viewed as only one measure of the customer service provided by REPs.” It’s a six-month rolling complaint rate; it counts complaints regardless of who was at fault, and a small company can move several spots on a handful of cases. Use it as a tiebreaker, not a verdict.
And if none of this applies to you
Check your bill for the name of the wires company. If your power comes from a co-op or a city-owned utility, you don’t get a renewal notice because you don’t have a retail contract to renew. The 1999 law that opened Texas to retail choice left that decision to co-op and municipal boards, and the PUCT says not all of Texas is open to competition.
You still have a board meeting you can attend. That’s a different kind of say than a shopping website gives you, and some months it’s the better one.
