Texas Commercial Electricity Market Loses 129 Plans in 24 Hours as Q3 Catalog Reshuffle Accelerates
The TxCP daily scrape logged 129 commercial-electricity plans removed, 43 new plans added, and 20 repriced in the July 17 refresh: one of the largest single-day catalog turnovers of 2026. Here is what the reshuffle signals for Texas SMB buyers heading into peak summer.
What the catalog data is really saying
The July 17, 2026 scrape of Texas commercial-electricity plans returned 549 active listings across the five ERCOT-connected TDU territories. On the day, 43 plans were newly added, 20 were repriced or restructured, and 129 were pulled from public availability. Net-net, roughly one in four listings that were available yesterday is not available today.
Aggregate rate context from today's snapshot: the market-average commercial rate landed at 10.97 cents per kWh across all TDU territories. Territory-level medians:
- Oncor: 140 active plans, median 11.9 cents per kWh
- CenterPoint: 120 active plans, median 10.1 cents per kWh
- TNMP: 102 active plans, median 11.85 cents per kWh
- AEP Central: 96 active plans, median 10.89 cents per kWh
- AEP North: 91 active plans, median 12.5 cents per kWh
The term-length gap widened again
The most useful line item for a commercial buyer sitting in front of a stack of quotes right now is the term-length spread:
- Short-term (12 months or less): 397 active offers, median 13 cents per kWh
- Mid-term (13 to 23 months): 74 active offers, median 7.9 cents per kWh
- Long-term (24 months or more): 42 active offers, median 8.0 cents per kWh
On median, mid-term plans are 5.1 cents per kWh below short-term. That is a 39 percent discount for accepting one to two extra billing years. Long-term plans sit essentially at parity with mid-term on median.
The pattern is not new, but the July 17 churn made it more pronounced. When 129 plans exit and 43 enter in a single day, most of what leaves is short-term (because REPs re-price short books more aggressively as ERCOT summer premiums firm up), and most of what enters at the cheap end is longer-term (because REPs hedge peak-summer volatility by moving customers onto multi-year fixed rates).
What this means for a commercial buyer in market right now
Three plain reads:
1. Same-quote-twice risk is real this week. If you pulled a shortlist on July 16 and are about to sign on July 17, a fifth of that list may no longer be valid. Re-pull rates on the day you sign, and ask your REP for a written re-quote dated today.
2. The short-term premium is not a mispricing. Short-term rates trading 5-plus cents above mid-term reflects real hedging cost during peak-summer ERCOT operations. Buyers who need genuine contract flexibility still pay for it. Buyers locking a term for cost predictability should look at the mid-term band first.
3. TDU territory matters more than usual. The gap between the cheapest TDU median (CenterPoint at 10.1 cents per kWh) and the most expensive (AEP North at 12.5 cents per kWh) is 2.4 cents per kWh, or roughly 24 percent. Businesses with facilities in more than one territory should not assume a single portfolio-wide rate is realistic.
What to do this week
- Verify your current plan is still in-market before requesting comparisons; ask your REP for a written re-quote dated today.
- If your renewal decision sits inside the mid-term band (13 to 23 months), request quotes at 18 and 24 months explicitly. That is where the pricing spread lives.
- If you have multi-TDU facilities, quote each site to its own TDU; do not accept a single blended rate without seeing the territory-level components.
Sources
- Live TxCP commercial-plan dataset, July 17, 2026 scrape (549 active plans across 5 TDU territories)
- ERCOT market notices and grid operations messages, July 2026
- PUCT commercial retail electric market rules