According to a Jan. 29 news release, a rate case is filed to the PUC every four years and is done to evaluate a utility company’s pricing.
The overview
If approved by the Public Utility Commission of Texas, residential customer bills will be lowered by approximately $0.82 a month, while small business customer bills will be lowered by approximately $1.28 a month.
Logan Anderson, a media relations specialist for CenterPoint Energy, said in an email that PUC will need to decide on the rate case in a future meeting before residents will see the decrease. The next PUC meeting is Feb. 13, although the agenda had not been posted as of Jan. 31, according to the organization's website.
“All of us at CenterPoint are committed to continuing to work to meet the needs of our customers and providing the reliable, safe and affordable service that they expect and deserve,” Jason Ryan, CenterPoint’s executive vice president of regulatory services and government affairs, said in the release.
Some context
The rate case agreement comes after CenterPoint withdrew its initial rate increase proposal, following the aftermath and backlash of Hurricane Beryl, which left millions of Houstonians without power for days.
The company's initial rate case proposal, filed in March, was expected to increase customer electricity bills by $1.25 a month, as well as increase the company’s revenue by $17 million.
This backlash led to CenterPoint launching the Greater Houston Resiliency Initiative in 2024, a program to improve the company’s communication and the system’s electricity resiliency through actions such as installing or replacing 9,516 utility poles, and trimming vegetation from nearly 1,500 distribution lines, according to the company’s website.
In December, CenterPoint proposed an idea to send all 15 emergency generation units to San Antonio for two years starting in spring, which they say would reduce Houstonian's electricity bills and result in no revenue or profit for CenterPoint. This proposal is currently under review by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, with no available timeline on when ERCOT will approve.
What else?
On Jan. 8, Houston City Council denied CenterPoint Energy’s request for a rate increase of $1.83 a month to homeowner's electricity bills. This rate increase request is part of the utility company’s “distribution cost recovery factor” rate increase request of $102.5 million, which would have helped cover the cost of the company's ongoing investments.
According to the agenda item, city staff recommended the city deny the rate increase due to the “expedited nature of the filing.”
