Texas Commercial Electricity Rates, September 21 2026: TCRI at 7.20 Cents/kWh, Mid-Term Contracts Hold the Bottom

Bottom line: The TxCP Commercial Rate Index (TCRI) from the texascommercialplans.com database sat at 7.20 cents per kWh across 10,233 tracked Texas commercial electricity plans in the ERCOT deregulated market as of September 21, 2026, up 1.4 percent from 7.10 cents at the prior snapshot. Mid-term contracts (13 to 24 months) hold the cheapest point on the curve at a 6.46 cents per kWh average. The demand-side headline this week is Meta's 144 MW Starling Solar power purchase agreement with Apex Clean Energy in Gonzales County, Texas, disclosed September 17, 2026. Updated weekly.

Market Pulse

Across the 10,233 commercial electricity plans we track in the texascommercialplans.com database as of September 21, 2026, the TxCP Commercial Rate Index moved 1.4 percent higher, from 7.10 cents to 7.20 cents per kWh. Catalog turnover was heavy this week in the ERCOT commercial market, with 295 new plans added and rate signals refreshed on more than two thirds of tracked plans, so the aggregate move overstates true repricing and understates term-curve dispersion. The cheapest average sits in the 13 to 24 month band at 6.46 cents per kWh; short-term plans of 1 to 12 months averaged 7.86 cents per kWh, a flexibility premium of roughly 22 percent versus the mid-term bottom.

What Moved This Week and Why It Matters

The single most consequential development for Texas commercial buyers this week is Meta's 144 MW Starling Solar PPA with Apex Clean Energy, announced September 17, 2026. The project itself is small next to a 2027 ERCOT summer peak that already sits above 91 GW. What it signals is not: the same hyperscaler pipeline that pushed Meta into a 1 GW El Paso data center campus is now anchoring solar projects in Gonzales County that would not otherwise clear their interconnection queue. That pipeline is why the 2027 and 2028 forward curve is bid up, and that curve is what a Texas commercial fixed rate is priced against.

What Happened

Meta and Apex Clean Energy expanded their joint renewable portfolio to 1.2 GW with a power purchase agreement covering Apex's 144 MW Starling Solar project in Gonzales County. Meta receives exclusive rights to the environmental attributes; the developer expects commercial operations in 2027, with an ERCOT interconnection queue anticipated in-service date of January 28, 2028. Apex framed the project as one that "would not have been built without Meta's commitment," a line the Texas renewable sector has been repeating all year on projects that need a creditworthy load anchor to clear financing.

Impact on Texas Commercial Buyers

Contract price. Hyperscaler-anchored solar adds ERCOT capacity but rarely displaces load, because the same buyer typically brings a matching multi-hundred-MW demand footprint. Net-of-load additions are what compress the forward curve; on this deal the load arrives first and the electrons follow. Our directional bias on 2027 and 2028 fixed offers stays higher, not lower.

Contract timing. Meta has already signed a 600 MW ENGIE solar deal in Stonewall County and a 100 percent output arrangement on a separate West Texas asset. Each new Meta or Oracle PPA that clears this quarter reprices the 2028 corporate PPA benchmark that indirectly informs the fixed rate offers hitting a small business owner's inbox.

Contract shape. Solar production concentrates 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., not the 6 to 9 p.m. hours ERCOT's July MORA flagged as its highest 2026 reserve-risk window. Solar-anchored PPAs do not directly hedge an evening peak, and REPs price that gap into the shaped block underlying a fixed offer.

The Meta PPA Read-Through: Three Questions Before You Sign a 2027 Fixed Rate

Is the offer indexed to a hub with material data center exposure (Houston Ship Channel, West Texas, or North Hub)? North Hub carries the deepest hyperscaler pipeline right now.
Does the offer include a heat rate call, or an ancillary services pass-through? Both are how REPs claw back margin when scarcity pricing lands on an unhedged evening hour.
Does the term extend into 2028? Once you cross the calendar into ISO periods with confirmed 25+ MW behind-the-meter cases sitting at the PUCT, the risk premium in the offer becomes durable, not seasonal.

What You Should Do This Week

Pull your current contract's expiration date and mark 90 days out on the calendar. Fixed rate offers are quoted against the forward curve for the delivery period, not spot.
Request quotes for both a 12 to 18 month bridge and a 24 to 36 month term. Our data shows a roughly 22 percent premium on the short end right now and mid-term as quietly the cheapest point.
Ask your REP whether the offered fixed price bundles ERCOT ancillary services and transmission or bills them as pass-through line items. The two structures produce very different final invoices.

Questions to ask your REP or broker this week:

Which delivery hub is the offer priced against, and what is the current 2027 shape premium versus the 2026 shape?
Are you willing to lock energy but leave capacity and ancillaries as pass-through?
What does the early termination structure look like if I want to re-shop mid-term?

Also moving

Oracle secures 568 MW of ENGIE Texas wind, plus a separate 433 MW virtual PPA with RWE. The RWE deal covers output from the Panther Creek I, II, and III wind farms in West Texas. Read-through for commercial buyers: sustained hyperscaler PPA volume continues to bid up the 2027 to 2029 forward curve, the same curve fixed rate quotes are priced against. See Utility Dive coverage of Texas hyperscaler PPA volume this quarter.
ERCOT begins large-load data center information request. ERCOT is collecting demand, on-site generation, water, cooling, and incentives data on every data center project seeking 25 MW or more. Responses are due October 12, 2026, and the Public Utility Commission of Texas is expected to publish an aggregated report by December 10, 2026. Any material policy signal from that report will land on 2027 to 2028 fixed rate offers within weeks of publication.
U.S. House advances Ratepayer Protection Act. Federal legislation would push regulators to consider whether large loads bear incremental infrastructure costs. Texas already applies its own data center interconnection and financial commitment rules under existing PUCT authority; watch whether the state layer tightens if the federal layer stalls.

Pricing Trend Analysis

Across our tracked commercial plans as of September 21, 2026, the term curve stays inverted for average pricing. Mid-term contracts (13 to 24 months) average 6.46 cents per kWh, long-term (25 months and up) average 6.87 cents, and short-term (1 to 12 months) average 7.86 cents. The short-term average is skewed high by outlier plans priced above 20 cents per kWh; on medians the picture is tighter (short-term 6.02 cents, mid-term 6.19 cents, long-term 6.58 cents), so the shape is dispersion at the top of the short-term band, not a clean price-in-time premium.

On the TDU axis, Oncor holds the lowest median at 6.38 cents per kWh, AEP Central sits at the top at 6.62 cents per kWh, a spread of 3.8 percent across the five ERCOT deregulated territories. Aggregate rate bands by TDU:

Date	TDU territory	Plans	Low	Median	High
2026-09-21	Oncor	2,406	$0.040	$0.0638	$0.236
2026-09-21	AEP North	1,769	$0.040	$0.0645	$0.211
2026-09-21	AEP Central	2,090	$0.040	$0.0662	$0.223
2026-09-21	CenterPoint	1,926	$0.040	$0.0653	$0.210
2026-09-21	TNMP	2,042	$0.040	$0.0646	$0.220

All figures are aggregate medians and low/high bounds across every commercial plan in the TxCP catalog for each TDU territory as of September 21, 2026. See the full pricing breakdown, including per-REP contract terms and monthly usage bands, in our data download.

REP Spotlight: Direct Energy

Direct Energy is a large national retail electric provider with 25 active commercial plans in our catalog this week, spanning contract terms from 12 to 36 months and coverage in all five ERCOT deregulated TDU territories (Oncor, CenterPoint, AEP Central, AEP North, and TNMP). Directional positioning: above the market average across the plans we track, so Direct Energy's core value case is service breadth and back-office maturity rather than headline price. Public brand features include a dedicated small business account team, published Electricity Facts Labels across most usage tiers, and long standing risk products that many brokers plug into for corporate procurement. Get this provider's full plan data, including per-usage-band pricing and contract term detail, in our data download.

Buyer Intelligence

Texas SMB shoppers who quote a fixed rate this week face two live decisions our data can settle. First: mid-term contracts (13 to 24 months) average 6.46 cents per kWh, a cleaner bottom than either the short-term band (which averages 7.86 cents but medians 6.02) or long-term (6.87 cents), so a bridge quote and a 24 to 36 month quote should be compared against that number, not the market average. Second: the Houston to Dallas TDU spread has compressed to about 2.4 percent on medians, so the case for switching territory is weaker than it looked over the summer.

Should a Texas business lock in a long-term commercial electricity contract right now?

Based on this week's data across our tracked plans, businesses with contracts expiring inside 90 days should quote both a 12 to 18 month bridge and a 24 to 36 month fixed offer, then compare against the mid-term band average of 6.46 cents per kWh. The 2027 and 2028 forward curve is being repriced upward by hyperscaler PPA volume like the Meta and Oracle deals this week, so waiting to shop into a later delivery period is not costless; signing all the way through 2028 today locks in the risk premium that landed on offers this quarter. Cross-check aggregate context against the EIA electricity data browser before committing.

Is Houston commercial electricity more expensive than Dallas right now?

Across our catalog on September 21, 2026, CenterPoint (Houston area) commercial plans median at 6.53 cents per kWh while Oncor (Dallas-Fort Worth area) medians at 6.38 cents per kWh, roughly a 2.4 percent gap. That spread is narrower than earlier in the summer, when Houston ran closer to 25 percent above Dallas on the same measure (see our September 8 weekly report for the earlier baseline). Two drivers compressed the gap: broader plan availability across CenterPoint since our July snapshot, and softer pricing on new short-term plans launched in the Houston zone in September.

Data Snapshot

Our September 21, 2026 snapshot spans 27+ retail electric providers and 10,233 active commercial plans across all five ERCOT deregulated TDU territories, with the market average up 1.4 percent week over week and mid-term contracts (13 to 24 months) holding the cheapest average at 6.46 cents per kWh.

Tracked REPs: 27+ retail electric providers across all five ERCOT deregulated TDU territories.
Active commercial plans: 10,233.
Plans added this week: 295.
Plans with rate signals refreshed this week: 7,081 (largely a catalog refresh signal, not a like-for-like reprice on every plan).
Average contract term: 24 months across tracked plans.
Market average rate (TCRI): 7.20 cents per kWh, up 1.4 percent from the prior snapshot.
Cheapest average band: 13 to 24 months at 6.46 cents per kWh.
Lowest TDU median: Oncor at 6.38 cents per kWh. Highest: AEP Central at 6.62 cents per kWh.

Full rate data, per-REP plan comparisons, and historical trends are available in our data download.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the average Texas commercial electricity rate in September 2026?

The TxCP Commercial Rate Index sits at 7.20 cents per kWh across 10,233 tracked commercial plans as of September 21, 2026, up 1.4 percent from the prior snapshot. The cheapest average is in the 13 to 24 month contract band at 6.46 cents per kWh.

Which Texas TDU territory has the cheapest commercial electricity rates right now?

Oncor (Dallas-Fort Worth and North Texas) holds the lowest median at 6.38 cents per kWh across the commercial plans we track. AEP Central runs highest at 6.62 cents per kWh. The spread across all five ERCOT deregulated TDU territories is about 3.8 percent.

How does the ERCOT data center audit affect commercial electricity pricing?

ERCOT's September 2026 information request covers every data center project seeking 25 MW or more; responses are due October 12, 2026, and the Public Utility Commission of Texas is expected to publish an aggregated report by December 10, 2026. That report is the earliest formal signal on 2027 and 2028 large-load impacts and is likely to move REP fixed rate offers within weeks of publication.