The shutoff moratorium was in place for the better part of 2020 due to the crushing economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, and three now-resigned PUC commissioners reinstated it in response to the further financial hardships caused by the February winter storm. The moratorium will be lifted on June 18, two days before a forecasted hotter-than-normal summer arrives, and shutoffs can resume in the final week of the month.
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Despite
hotter-than-normal summer temperatures in the forecast, private electricity companies are pressuring the Public Utility Commission of Texas, or PUC, to allow power shutoffs for people who haven’t paid their bills.
Many Texans are behind on electricity bills: nearly 170,000 in San Antonio and about 50,000 in Austin areas where electricity is provided by city-owned utilities. The average past-due amount is about $600.
NRG and Vistra the massive conglomerates whose subsidiaries dominate the state’s deregulated electricity market, which includes Houston and Dallas did not answer TPR s questions about how many of their customers owe money.
Texas’ blackouts may come at a steep cost
Especially for people who struggle with energy bills year-round
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Photo by Matthew Busch / AFP via Getty Images
As the lights begin to turn back on after nearly a week of outages across Texas, residents who already struggled to pay their utility bills might find it harder to recover. Costs are piling up that could continue to limit some people’s access to heating and electricity even after blackouts end.
“The ‘heat or eat dilemma’ is a really, really significant issue.”
“The ‘heat or eat dilemma’ is a really, really significant issue,” says Emily Grubert, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. “We know that a lot of people are going to basically be choosing between paying for heating or paying for other things that they really need.”