Texas Heat Moratorium: What Protection You Really Have (2026)

No. The phrase "heat moratorium" is the myth. People search it expecting what other states have in winter: a season, written into the rules, when the power company cannot touch you. Pennsylvania blocks winter shutoffs for hardship households from December 1 through March 31, dates on a page. Texas wrote nothing like that for summer.

What Texas wrote instead is 16 TAC § 25.483, the PUCT's disconnection rule. It bans disconnection for nonpayment during an extreme weather emergency, and for heat, the rule defines that as a day when "the NWS issues a heat advisory for a county, or when such advisory has been issued on any one of the preceding two calendar days in a county."

Read that again. The protection is not a season. It is a weather product, issued by a National Weather Service forecaster, for a specific county, for a specific day, plus a two-day tail. Nobody announces it in June. Nobody guarantees it through September. On August 26 you can be protected in Dallas County and exposed in El Paso County, and neither status tells you anything about August 29.

That is the design. Everything below follows from it.

Walk through a real one. Here is Dallas County in August 2026, straight from the National Weather Service product archive (as of August 26, 2026):

Monday, August 11. NWS Fort Worth has a heat advisory in effect for Dallas County from 1 p.m. to 8 p.m. That single afternoon advisory makes August 11 an extreme weather emergency day. No REP may order a disconnection for nonpayment in Dallas County.

August 12 through 14. A new advisory covers the county for three days. Protected.

August 15 through 22. Another advisory takes effect. It was originally set to expire August 16. Forecasters extended it, one day at a time, through the evening of August 22. Each extension extended the shutoff ban with it. Protected for eight more days, none of them promised in advance.

August 23 and 24. No advisory in effect. Still protected, because the rule covers the two calendar days after an advisory day.

Evening of August 24. A fresh advisory takes effect before the grace days run out, scheduled through August 27. The protection rolls on.

Add it up: Dallas County households were continuously protected from August 11 through at least August 29. Nineteen straight days. But that number exists only in hindsight. It was built one forecast at a time, and the first day the chain breaks, a provider can lawfully order the power cut while it is still 98 degrees at dinner time.

To check your own county today, look for an active heat advisory at weather.gov. If one is in effect now, or was in effect yesterday or the day before, you cannot legally be disconnected for nonpayment today.

Two different companies stand between you and a dark house, and knowing which does what tells you whom to call.

Your retail electric provider (REP), the company on your bill, decides to disconnect and issues the order. Under 25.483 the notice must give you a disconnection date at least 10 days out, and that date cannot fall on a weekend, a holiday, or a day the provider isn't taking payments.

Your transmission and distribution utility (TDU), Oncor, CenterPoint, AEP Texas, or TNMP depending on where you live, is the only one that physically pulls the plug. The rule says it plainly: "Only a transmission and distribution utility (TDU), municipally owned utility, or electric cooperative may perform physical disconnections."

So the REP holds the pen and the TDU holds the switch. During an extreme weather emergency, the rule binds the pen: the REP "must not authorize a disconnection for nonpayment of electric service for any customer in a county in which an extreme weather emergency occurs." Every call about a shutoff notice, a payment plan, or a moratorium goes to your REP, at the number on your bill. Calling Oncor will get you sympathy and a referral.

The rule has teeth, and the bite marks are public record.

Between November 1, 2020 and September 1, 2022, extreme weather emergencies were declared on 170 days in counties served by Ambit Texas. During those emergency days, Ambit submitted disconnection orders for 905 customers. The TDUs completed 136 of them: 136 households cut off on days the law said they could not be. In October 2023 the PUCT approved a settlement. Ambit paid a $300,000 administrative penalty and rebuilt its systems to check NWS advisories before any disconnect order goes out (PUCT Docket 55337).

It wasn't one bad actor. TXU Energy paid $91,500 in 2024 for authorizing disconnections during the emergencies of summer 2023, even though the TDUs caught them and completed none (Docket 56560). Value Based Brands, a Vistra Corp. subsidiary that does business as 4Change Energy, paid $111,200 the same year for its own extreme-weather disconnection orders (Docket 56561).

Two things to take from the enforcement record. First, the PUCT does audit this: all three settlements above required the REP to add automated NWS-monitoring checks, computer queries every ten minutes that catch an advisory faster than a manual review would, because getting it wrong cost each of them six figures. Second, the violations happened anyway, for years, to real households. If your power gets cut on a heat advisory day, do not assume it was legal. Check the advisory archive, then file a complaint. The rule is only as strong as the people who invoke it.

Yes, and prepaid customers need this more than anyone, because prepaid service disconnects automatically when the balance runs out. No notice period, no 10 days.

Under 16 TAC § 25.498, a prepaid REP must not initiate disconnection during an extreme weather emergency, full stop. Your balance can hit zero and go negative on an advisory day; the lights stay on. The rule also sets a floor for normal times: a prepaid provider may only start disconnection when a residential balance falls below a disconnection balance capped at $10.

The catch comes after. The electricity you used during the emergency isn't free; it accrues as a negative balance. If that negative balance reaches $50 or more, you have the right to a deferred payment plan to pay it off over time, with no finance charges. But the window to request it is brutal: within one business day after the weather emergency ends. Miss it and you owe the whole balance before the meter runs again. If you're on prepaid during a heat wave, set an alarm: the day the advisory chain breaks, call your provider and say "deferred payment plan" before the day is out.

One more rule worth knowing: a REP must not knowingly put a critical care or chronic condition customer on prepaid service at all. If that describes your household and you're on prepaid, the provider is required to move you to postpaid service without fees once it learns of the designation.

Texas gives medically vulnerable households a formal designation under 16 TAC § 25.497, with exact durations. Two tiers:

Critical Care Residential Customer. Someone at the residence depends on an electric-powered medical device to sustain life. The designation lasts 2 years and is renewable.

Chronic Condition Residential Customer. Someone needs an electric device, or electric heating or cooling, to prevent impairment of a major life function. The designation lasts 90 days, or, if the physician certifies the condition is lifelong, up to 1 year. Also renewable.

The path runs through your doctor, not your provider's goodwill. The physician completes the PUCT's standard critical care application form and submits it to your TDU. If it lands at your REP instead, the REP must forward it to the TDU electronically within 2 business days.

Be clear-eyed about what the designation buys. It does not erase the bill, and it is not an absolute shutoff ban. What it adds: extra notice rights, and a hard protection under 25.483 when it matters most. A REP must not authorize disconnection of a delinquent Critical Care customer who establishes that losing power "will cause some person at that residence to become seriously ill or more seriously ill." To lock that in when a disconnection date is looming, three things must happen by that date: the attending physician contacts the REP, the physician submits a written statement confirming the status, and you enter a deferred payment plan. Do all three. Renew the form before it expires; an expired designation protects no one.

Four moves, in order. Start the day the notice arrives, not the day before the date on it.

1. Call your REP and say "deferred payment plan." For bills that come due during an extreme weather emergency, the provider must offer you one on request; this is 25.483 and 25.480, not a favor. The balance spreads over installments and the disconnection stops while you keep the terms. Know the trade: the provider may place a switch-hold on your meter, meaning you cannot change providers until the deferred balance is paid.

2. Dispute what's wrong and complain to the PUCT. If any part of the bill is wrong, pay the undisputed portion and say the rest is disputed. The rule prohibits disconnection for "failure to pay disputed charges... until a determination as to the accuracy of the charges has been made by the REP or the commission." If the provider won't resolve it, file with PUCT Consumer Protection: 1-888-782-8477, or consumer@puc.texas.gov. A pending complaint freezes the disputed-charge disconnection until the PUCT rules.

3. Get money moving. Dial 211 and ask for utility assistance in your county; that routes you to the Comprehensive Energy Assistance Program, Texas's LIHEAP, and to local charity funds. Our help with your electric bill guide lists the programs and what each one takes to apply.

4. If anyone in the house is medically vulnerable, start the form today. The critical care designation described above takes a physician's signature and processing time. During an active emergency, the faster version: have the physician contact your REP directly and follow with the written statement, then enter the payment plan.

The advisory calendar buys you days. These four moves are what the days are for.

Three gaps, and they are gaps by design, not oversight.

The bill never stops. The moratorium halts the switch, not the meter. August is when Texas usage peaks, so protected weeks are also the weeks the balance grows fastest. A household protected for 19 straight advisory days comes out the other side owing 19 more days of peak-summer electricity. If your bill is structurally broken, a plan priced for usage you don't have, the moratorium just delays the reckoning; see the 2,000 kWh trap for how that happens.

The day after is fully exposed. Protection ends two calendar days after the last advisory day. Day three can be 97°F, muggy, and dangerous for an elderly household, and disconnection is legal, because 97°F with the wrong humidity may not clear the advisory bar. The rule protects against forecast products, not against heat.

Nobody has fixed this, and it isn't for lack of asking. In July 2023, AARP Texas and the Texas Consumer Association filed an emergency petition asking the PUCT to suspend the trigger rules and impose a true moratorium on disconnections during the hottest months. They followed with the names of 7,700 Texans supporting it. As of August 26, 2026, the docket (PUCT 55286) shows no commission order adopting it. Texas chose a thermostat over a calendar, and it has declined to revisit the choice.

For how Texas compares to the 49 other states, including the ones that wrote real dates into their rules, see our utility shutoff protections by state guide.

No. Everything above governs retail electric providers in the competitive ERCOT market, the part of Texas where you choose your provider. Municipal utilities and electric cooperatives write their own disconnection policies, set by city councils and member-elected boards, and the PUCT's REP disconnection rule does not run their shutoff calendars.

Austin Energy customers should work through City of Austin Utilities' assistance programs: the Customer Assistance Program for ongoing hardship, Financial Support Plus 1 for one-time emergencies, and case management for medically vulnerable customers. Policies and current disconnection practices are at coautilities.com.

CPS Energy in San Antonio publishes its own payment-assistance and disconnection procedures at cpsenergy.com. Confirm the current disconnection policy directly with CPS; do not assume the REP rules above apply to it.

Co-op members, from Pedernales to Victoria, should check their cooperative's tariff or call member services and ask two questions: what is your extreme weather disconnection policy, and do you honor medical certifications. The answers vary co-op by co-op.

If you're not sure which world you live in, check whether your address returns plans on the state shopping site. If it does, the PUCT rules above are yours. If it doesn't, your protections live in your utility's own rulebook, so go read it before you need it.