Texas Regulators Approve the First Two 765-kV Permian Basin Transmission Lines

What the PUCT Approved

After hours of testimony in Odessa, the five-member Public Utility Commission of Texas voted 5-0 to approve amendments to two Certificates of Convenience and Necessity (CCNs) filed by Oncor, clearing the way to build two 765-kilovolt transmission lines that will ship electricity southwest from Bosque County toward the oil-and-gas-producing Permian Basin (The Texas Tribune, Aug. 28, 2026). Reporting from RTO Insider and other outlets put the two lines at about 424 miles and roughly $3.95 billion combined, spanning at least 30 counties.

These are the first projects to earn regulatory approval under the Permian Basin Reliability Plan, a transmission buildout that Texas lawmakers directed ERCOT to design in 2023 to relieve a years-long power bottleneck for West Texas oil, gas and industrial customers. The original plan, approved by the commission in October 2024, called for three first-of-their-kind 765-kV lines; on August 28 the commissioners tabled a decision on the third proposal, the Howard Solstice line through South Texas, for further deliberation. Barring successful legal challenges, the vote was the last administrative hurdle before construction can begin.

The approval came over unusually loud objections. The Texas Senate, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, and Senate Business and Commerce Chair Charles Schwertner had all urged the commission to wait until the Legislature could reform the process in its 2027 session, and Attorney General Ken Paxton filed an amicus brief supporting landowners' legal challenges. Hundreds of landowners protested that the routes would scar farmland and ranchland their families have held for generations. Commissioners said Oncor had satisfied the requirements of the law and that ERCOT had demonstrated the lines are needed.

Update (Sept. 14, 2026): A Third Line Approved, Two Sent Back

The August 28 approval covered only the first two lines. On Friday, September 11, 2026, the Public Utility Commission approved a third 765-kV line — the roughly 370-mile Howard Solstice line, which will carry power through South Texas toward the oil-and-gas-producing Permian Basin across 14 counties, including Uvalde, Kerr, Bexar and Medina. The approval is conditional: the commission directed the transmission companies (AEP Texas and CPS Energy) to work with landowners on route modifications, including moving the line north of Uvalde County to reduce construction through grassland (The Texas Tribune, Sept. 11, 2026). “This is really an example, quite frankly, of the process working,” Commissioner Kathleen Jackson said before the panel voted.

The commission did not approve everything on its plate. Two of the remaining proposals were sent back to the agency's administrative courts to resolve open issues, after PUCT Chairman Thomas Gleeson wrote that it was “premature” to act because the State Office of Administrative Hearings had issued an incomplete proposal for decision — one that did not address whether the lines meet federal reliability standards and did not estimate how much consumers would save (The Texas Tribune, Sept. 11, 2026). Landowner groups and lawmakers including Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, Sen. Charles Schwertner and Rep. Ken King had urged the commission to slow down or reject the plan over private-property concerns.

A note on cost: as the Tribune reported, no official analysis of how the buildout will affect customer bills has been published — the administrative ruling itself was missing an estimate of consumer savings. The Texas Public Policy Foundation, a think tank that opposes the plan, estimates the full slate of ERCOT-approved transmission projects could cost close to $100 billion over their lifetime, which it translates to on the order of $200 or more a year for a typical household. That figure is a contested advocacy estimate, not an official PUCT number, and any real effect phases in gradually over the multi-year life of the assets rather than arriving as a sudden jump.

For a residential shopper, none of this changes the takeaway below: whichever of these lines are ultimately built, the cost is recovered on the regulated delivery charge, which is identical for every retail provider in your area — so it does not change which energy plan is cheapest for your home.

Where This Fits (2026 Timeline)

How a Transmission Line Reaches Your Bill

A residential Texas electricity bill has two very different halves. The energy charge is the competitive part — it is what you shop for when you pick a retail provider and plan. The delivery charge is the regulated part: it pays your local transmission-and-distribution utility (TDU) — Oncor, CenterPoint, AEP Texas or TNMP — to move power over the poles, wires and high-voltage lines to your home. New transmission like these 765-kV lines is recovered on that delivery side, not the competitive side.

Critically, the delivery charge is set by the PUCT and is identical for every retail provider in a given area. That is the whole point for a shopper: a multibillion-dollar transmission project raises (or an efficiency lowers) the delivery portion of every plan by the same amount, so it never reorders which plan is cheapest at your usage. State Sen. Kevin Sparks warned the construction costs would be “socialized in residential bills” across the grid; supporters counter that the lines prevent rolling outages in West Texas and support economic growth. Because these are billion-dollar, multi-year builds recovered over the life of the assets, any effect on your bill phases in gradually rather than appearing as a sudden jump.

What It Means for Texas Shoppers

The trap most Texans fall into isn't the delivery charge — it's the advertised energy rate. Most of the cheapest-looking headline rates are bill-credit plans engineered to look cheapest at exactly 1,000 kWh, the “1,000 kWh illusion.” A large home that picks the plan advertised cheapest at 1,000 kWh can overpay by roughly $43/month versus the plan that's actually cheapest at its real usage. Pull your last 12 months of usage and compare the real effective cents-per-kWh at an average month, a low month and a high month before you lock.

Related Texas Electricity Resources