Are Texas electricity prices still going up?
Texas residential electricity is cheaper than a year ago, not dearer. The sourced series, and why a mild summer is not the explanation.
The short answer
No. Texas residential electricity is cheaper than it was a year ago, not dearer. The average residential price in August 2026 was 13.88 cents per kilowatt-hour — down 10.2% year over year, and down 18.3% from the peak it hit this spring (U.S. Energy Information Administration, as of August 2026).
That cuts against how it feels, which is exactly why it is worth checking rather than assuming. Below is the series it comes from, and one popular explanation that does not survive contact with the data.
What the series shows
The fall was not a slow drift. Almost all of it landed in a single month: 16.44¢ in May 2026 to 13.58¢ in June 2026, a 17.4% fall in one month (U.S. Energy Information Administration, as of August 2026). Before that, the price had been grinding upward for most of the year and peaked in April.
Two framings of the same number, and both belong on the page:
- Against last summer: 13.88¢ now against 15.46¢ in August 2025 — down 10.2% year over year.
- Against the April peak: 13.88¢ now against 16.99¢ then — down 18.3% from the peak.
“It must have been a mild summer”
This is the explanation most people reach for. It is checkable, so we checked it.
Cooling degree-days measure how much cooling the weather actually demanded — a hotter month demands more. Austin recorded 644 cooling degree-days in July 2026 (NOAA NCEI Global Summary of the Month, as of July 2026), against a July normal of 644.8 cooling degree-days (NOAA NCEI U.S. Climate Normals 1991-2020). That is -0.1% against the normal: an ordinary July, not a cool one.
San Antonio ran a little under its own normal — 607 cooling degree-days against a normal of 643.3 cooling degree-days, or -5.6% against the normal — but not nearly enough to explain a fall of this size.
So demand does not account for it. In Austin the summer was normal and the price still dropped.
What we are not going to tell you
We cannot say from the data we hold what caused the step down between May and June 2026; the cause is not established here. Nothing behind this page measures fuel costs, contract mixes, or regulated rate changes. We are not going to hand you a reason we did not measure.
The movement is real and sourced. The cause is somebody else’s reporting until it is somebody’s data. That distinction is the whole point of this page: a number with a source and a date is worth something, and a confident story attached to it without one is worth less than nothing.
What it means for your bill
Your bill is set by your retail plan, not by the state average, so a statewide fall does not automatically show up on your statement. The calm move: if you are on a fixed plan you signed when prices were near the April peak, this is a reasonable month to check your renewal rate against what the market is doing now. Check your plan’s end date before you do anything else.