CenterPoint in 2026: the company behind every Houston bill

Written by the Solar Learning Lab research deskUpdated August 17, 20267 min read

Houston solar shoppers keep asking the wrong company for a rate. CenterPoint Energy Houston Electric owns the wires, reads the meters and approves every interconnection in the metro, but it has not sold a residential kilowatt-hour since Texas deregulated. Your energy price and your solar buyback both live in a contract with a retail electric provider you picked, or defaulted into. Understanding which company controls which lever is half the game here.

5.9¢

CenterPoint volumetric delivery charge per kWh, paid on top of whatever your REP charges

$63.93

Average delivery-only bill at 1,000 kWh, before a single cent of energy supply

1,096 kWh

Average monthly use for a Texas home in 2024, which is why bills bite despite cheap energy

CenterPoint charges every Houston home $2.11 plus $2.79 monthly plus 5.9027 cents per delivered kWh under the PUCT rate report effective October 1, 2025. Energy supply and solar buyback terms come from your retail provider, because Texas has no net metering mandate in competitive territory. Interconnection paperwork still goes through CenterPoint before panels turn on. Solar you consume on site avoids both halves of the bill.

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What CenterPoint is and is not

In ERCOT's competitive market the roles split three ways. CenterPoint is the transmission and distribution utility: regulated, monopoly wires, no retail sales. Your REP buys wholesale power and sells it to you on contract terms. ERCOT itself operates the grid. For solar, the practical consequence is that no single company can quote you a Houston rate. CenterPoint publishes its delivery components, your REP sets the energy price and any export credit, and the two add together on one bill your REP issues.

Source: CenterPoint Houston Electric residential rates.

The delivery charges everyone pays

The regulator's rate report, effective October 1, 2025, sets the residential delivery stack:

Delivery component	Charge
Customer charge	$2.11 / month
Metering charge	$2.79 / meter / month
Volumetric delivery	5.9027¢ / kWh
Delivery bill at 500 kWh	$34.41
Delivery bill at 1,000 kWh	$63.93
Delivery bill at 2,000 kWh	$122.95

Source: PUCT CenterPoint rate report, effective 10/1/2025.

CenterPoint's own breakdown shows where the volumetric charge comes from: 2.324 cents of base distribution, 1.6173 cents of transmission cost recovery, plus smaller riders for distribution cost recovery, energy efficiency, resiliency and two system restoration charges from storm securitization. Six active rate filings at the PUCT could nudge these numbers, which is normal for a wires company and worth a glance before you lock a 25-year forecast. Statewide, Texas residential power averaged 16.44 cents per kWh in May 2026 per EIA Table 5.6.A, delivery included.

Component detail and filing list: CenterPoint residential rates page.

Your export deal lives in your REP plan

Texas never mandated net metering in competitive territory, so what an exported kilowatt-hour earns depends entirely on the retail plan you sign. Reliant markets a Simple Solar Sell Back Flex plan whose published pricing for the CenterPoint service area ran 13.9 to 14 cents through early 2026, though the page stops short of labeling those figures as the export credit itself. TXU sells three named buyback plans, with credits accumulating in a rolling Buyback Bank and no rates published at all. That opacity is the point: the plans are designed to be compared feature by feature, not skimmed.

Our advice runs the other direction from most Texas solar marketing. Size the system to your daytime consumption first, because self-consumed power reliably saves both the energy price and the delivery stack, then treat the buyback as upside that can change when your contract renews.

Sources: Reliant Simple Solar Sell Back Flex historical pricing; TXU home solar buyback.

Interconnection runs through CenterPoint

Whichever REP you choose, the physical hookup is CenterPoint's. The City of Houston's solar permit guide is blunt about sequence: an interconnection application must be submitted to CenterPoint for approval before installation. City permitting itself requires both a structural and an electrical permit under one project number, filed through iPermits with plans in ProjectDox. There is no flat solar fee; costs assemble from a $91.06 minimum permit fee, a $33.56 administrative fee, valuation based charges and electrical line items. Full walkthrough with the fee table lives on our Houston page.

Sources: City of Houston CE-1198 solar permit guide; 2026 permit fee schedule.

Houston utility questions, answered

Can I buy my electricity from CenterPoint?

No. In the deregulated ERCOT market CenterPoint owns and operates the poles, wires and meters, while a retail electric provider of your choosing sells you energy. Every Houston bill is really two businesses stacked together: regulated delivery charges plus your REP's energy price. Source: CenterPoint residential rates.

Does Texas require net metering?

No statewide mandate covers competitive areas. Export compensation is a plan feature you shop for. Reliant, TXU and other REPs market named solar buyback plans, and the terms differ enough that two neighbors with identical roofs can earn meaningfully different credits. Read the electricity facts label before signing anything.

What does delivery cost on top of my energy price?

Per the PUCT rate report effective October 1, 2025: a $2.11 customer charge, $2.79 metering charge and 5.9027 cents per kWh volumetric. At 1,000 kWh that is $63.93 of delivery before your REP charges a cent for the energy itself. Source: PUCT CenterPoint rate report.

Does solar reduce my delivery charges too?

Self-consumed solar does, because the volumetric delivery charge bills on kilowatt-hours pulled through the meter. Power your home makes and uses never crosses the wires, so it avoids both the energy price and the roughly 5.9 cent delivery stack. That is a bigger deal in Houston than shoppers realize, since delivery is nearly a third of the effective rate.

Is there a CenterPoint or City of Houston solar rebate?

We found none on any page we reviewed, current or closed. The Houston value case is built on avoided energy plus avoided delivery, a competitive REP buyback plan and the low install prices on our Houston page, not on rebates.

What we could not verify

Open as of August 17, 2026: whether Reliant's posted monthly prices are the export credit rate or the consumption rate, any published TXU buyback rate in cents, effective dates for any REP buyback rate, a CenterPoint delivery rate newer than the 10/1/2025 report, and any residential solar rebate from CenterPoint or the City of Houston. Buyback plans are contracts, not tariffs, and they resist the kind of sourcing we require, so we say so instead of pretending.

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