TDU Delivery Charges: The Part of Your Bill No Plan Can Change
A TDU delivery charge is the fee a Texas utility (the poles-and-wires company, not your retail electric provider) bills for transporting electricity to your home. It's set by the Public Utility Commission, structured as a per-kWh rate plus a monthly base fee, and it's identical across every retail plan in that utility's territory.
There is a line on your electricity bill that no plan you switch to will ever change. It is the TDU delivery charge, it is set by regulation rather than competition, and it is identical on every offer sold in your area. Knowing which part of the bill is fixed and which part is actually up for grabs is what makes plan shopping worth doing at all.
What a TDU Actually Is
TDU stands for Transmission and Distribution Utility. It is the company that physically owns the poles, wires, transformers, and meters running to your house. Oncor covers most of North Texas, CenterPoint covers Houston and the surrounding area, AEP Texas Central and AEP Texas North split large parts of South and West Texas, and TNMP serves a patchwork of its own. None of these companies sell you electricity. They deliver it, no matter who bills you for the power itself. One distinction worth drawing: Austin Energy and CPS Energy in San Antonio are municipally owned utilities, not TDUs. They handle delivery and supply together, and their customers do not shop retail plans at all.
The Delivery Charge Structure: Per-kWh Plus a Base Fee
Delivery charges are built the same way almost everywhere in Texas: a per-kWh rate applied to your usage, plus a flat monthly base charge that shows up whether you used 100 kWh or 2,000 kWh. Say your TDU charges 4.5 cents per kWh for delivery plus an $8 base fee, a purely illustrative example and not a live rate. On a 1,094 kWh month, the Texas average per the EIA (2026), that works out to about $49 of per-kWh delivery plus the $8 base, so roughly $57 before the retail electric provider's energy charge is added at all. Higher usage does not just cost more in energy. It costs more in delivery too, because the per-kWh piece scales with consumption.
- •Pole and wire maintenance across the utility's service territory
- •Transformers, substations, and the physical grid connecting homes to the transmission network
- •Metering equipment and the reading/billing infrastructure behind it
- •A share of storm-hardening and reliability costs approved by the Public Utility Commission of Texas
- •Regulatory riders and surcharges specific to that TDU's approved rate case
Why Every Plan In Your Territory Carries the Same Delivery Charge
The Texas retail electricity market is competitive on the energy charge, the part the retail electric provider sets. It is not competitive on delivery. The TDU rate is filed with, and approved by, the Public Utility Commission of Texas, and it applies uniformly to every retailer operating in that footprint. A household in Oncor territory pays Oncor's delivery rate whether the bill comes from TXU Energy, Reliant Energy, Gexa Energy, or 4Change Energy. The number on the delivery line of the bill doesn't move when you switch providers. Only the energy charge line does.
Delivery is billed per kWh on top of a fixed monthly charge, so a higher-usage household pays more in delivery even though the delivery rate is identical for everyone in the territory.
Here is the part that catches people out. On the illustrative numbers above, roughly $57 of a 1,094 kWh month goes to delivery before the retail provider's energy charge is added at all. Shopping every plan in the market will not move that line by a cent. It is set by your address, approved by the Public Utility Commission of Texas, and identical on every offer you will see.
What Plan Shopping Can and Can't Fix
This is the part worth internalizing before comparing any plans: shopping changes the energy charge, the base rate, the contract length, and any bill credits or usage tiers a retail electric provider builds in. It does not change the delivery charge, because that's fixed by your address and regulated separately. Understanding this split changes what you're actually negotiating when you compare offers.
- •Changes with plan choice: energy rate per kWh, contract length, usage-based credits, renewable content, early termination fee
- •Fixed by TDU territory: delivery per-kWh rate, monthly base delivery charge, metering fees, storm-related riders
- •Result: two plans with identical advertised rates can produce different total bills if their bill-credit thresholds interact differently with your usage, but the delivery line will match to the cent
Watch for marketing that implies a plan has 'no delivery fees' or a special deal on delivery. No retail electric provider sets or waives the TDU charge. If a plan's total price looks unusually low, check whether it's absorbing the delivery line into a blended rate that only looks good at one specific usage level.
When comparing plans, isolate the energy charge from the total advertised rate before judging value. The delivery portion is identical across every offer in your TDU territory, so the only number that actually differentiates plans is the energy charge and how bill credits apply to your typical usage.
The delivery line on your bill won't change no matter which plan you pick, but the energy charge sitting next to it can vary meaningfully. See how today's energy charges compare for your address and usage.
Compare live rates for your homeFrequently asked questions
TDU stands for Transmission and Distribution Utility, the company that owns and maintains the poles, wires, transformers, and meters in your area. It has nothing to do with generating electricity or setting the energy rate on your plan.
No. Your TDU is fixed by your street address, not by which retail electric provider you sign up with. Oncor serves most of North Texas, CenterPoint serves Houston, and AEP Texas and TNMP cover other regions. Some Texas cities, Austin and San Antonio among them, are served by municipal utilities instead and have no retail choice at all.
Each TDU files its own rate case with the Public Utility Commission of Texas, so the per-kWh delivery rate and base fee vary by utility footprint, not by which retailer you pick within that footprint.
No. Every plan sold in your TDU territory carries the identical delivery charge, set by regulation rather than competition. Switching plans only changes the energy charge, the portion the retail electric provider controls.
It covers the physical infrastructure: pole and wire maintenance, transformers, metering, and a share of grid reliability and storm-hardening costs approved by the Public Utility Commission of Texas. It is billed as a per-kWh rate plus a fixed monthly base charge.