2025 Texas sessionsRegular and both called sessions have ended. This index covers House and Senate bills, not resolutions. Statuses come from official reports.

2025 · Regular session · House bill

HB5247

HB5247 creates an optional, single annual proceeding to recover transmission and distribution capital costs through nonfuel electric rates.

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Official caption: Relating to an alternative capital recovery process for certain utilities.

Signed by governorSource-checked explanation published

Official report lists House author(s): Geren. This does not identify sponsors or amendment drafters.

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Bill explanation published · Version and amendment review scope is stated below · Individual amendment records may not be separately annotated.

Bill highlights

Selected points from the published explanation. Follow each point to its source-linked context; conditions and limits may matter.

HB5247 creates an optional, single annual proceeding to recover transmission and distribution capital costs through nonfuel electric rates.
The utility must give the PUC at least 60 days' advance notice with spending evidence, demonstrate continuing eligibility each year, and report when it no longer qualifies.
The utility may record eligible costs not yet in rates—including depreciation and financing-related carrying costs—as a regulatory asset, meaning costs set aside for later recovery from customers.
The utility cannot seek another adjustment under this or the listed alternative mechanisms until a year after filing.
Sources: final law, new Utilities Code 36.216; history and effective date.

Read the full explanation ↓

What does it do?

HB5247 creates an optional, single annual proceeding to recover transmission and distribution capital costs through nonfuel electric rates. It applies only to utilities operating solely within ERCOT that the Public Utility Commission (PUC) identified as responsible for transmission construction in the approved Permian Basin reliability plan; river authorities are excluded. A qualifying utility must have spent more than three times its annual depreciation on capital in the preceding calendar year.

The utility must give the PUC at least 60 days’ advance notice with spending evidence, demonstrate continuing eligibility each year, and report when it no longer qualifies. The PUC has a 120-day approval deadline. Retail electric providers receive 45 days’ notice before rates take effect. If no final order arrives on time and the notice condition is met, requested rates may begin temporarily no earlier than day 165, subject to refund or credit of the difference from final rates, with interest.

The utility may record eligible costs not yet in rates—including depreciation and financing-related carrying costs—as a regulatory asset, meaning costs set aside for later recovery from customers. Unless the utility agrees otherwise, recovery is normally over no more than 18 months; a longer period applies if necessary to avoid exceeding the allowed weather-normalized return. Excess earnings must reduce that asset balance. Customer-growth allocation and weather-normalized revenue effects must be considered.

The utility cannot seek another adjustment under this or the listed alternative mechanisms until a year after filing. Eligibility can end, but existing rates stay until changed in a later proceeding. The law took effect June 20, 2025; this new section expires December 31, 2035, and directs the PUC to adopt implementing rules as soon as practicable.

Sources: final law, new Utilities Code 36.216; history and effective date.

What changed along the way?

The original proposal used a different section number, a different eligibility formulation tied to construction and spending before September 2025, and normally allowed only 12 months to recover the deferred asset. Updating customer-class allocations was optional.

The House substitute tied eligibility to PUC responsibility assignments in the Permian Basin plan and spending in the preceding calendar year. It added advance notice and continuing-eligibility duties, made growth/revenue adjustments mandatory, extended normal recovery to 18 months, required excess-earnings offsets, allowed financial-risk consideration when setting returns in a full rate case, and added a possible refund of certain carrying costs for unreasonably delayed projects. The engrossed text also corrected the cited chapter number for the 2023 resiliency law.

Jolanda Jones’s sole indexed House floor amendment would have required an estimate of legal, administrative and regulatory savings and a reasonable share reflected in rates for residential customers. It failed May 8 and is not law.

The Senate substitute preserved access to other lawful recovery mechanisms for ineligible utilities, required contemporaneous documentation for the specified project-delay exception, and added the December 2035 expiration. The House concurred; those Senate provisions match the final law.

Sources: five text versions; amendment status; failed Jones amendment; adopted Senate substitute packet.

For the full amendment record, open the official amendment index.

Official bill versions

Compare the published text versions in the official text index. A change is not attributed to a specific amendment here without a verified record.

Who could benefit—and who could bear the costs?

Eligible utilities can combine proceedings and recover investment costs and carrying costs sooner. Customers may face changed delivery charges; neither lower bills nor a particular increase is guaranteed. The PUC may consider the mechanism’s effect on utility financial risk when setting the allowed return in a full base-rate case.

Later review of whether investments were prudent, reasonable and necessary remains available, as do refunds of improper recovery with carrying costs. The law also preserves possible refunds of the realized equity portion of deferred carrying costs for a plan-related transmission project unreasonably delayed beyond December 31, 2030 because of utility actions. The exception requires contemporaneous evidence that delay was needed to maximize other projects’ load-serving capability; it is not an automatic refund of every project cost.

Existing financing orders, jurisdictional limits, municipal ratemaking authority and reimbursement for municipal rate-case expenses are preserved. Ineligible utilities, including river authorities, may still seek relief through other lawful mechanisms. The cited 2023 resiliency provision was separately renumbered from 38.078 to 38.079 by HB1620; it is not the different circuit-segmentation provision that also carried the old number.

All six indexed fiscal-note files anticipate no significant state or local fiscal effect and assume existing resources can absorb implementation costs; the latest, dated May 27, 2025, assesses the Senate-passed bill. That government-budget estimate does not measure household electricity bills, guarantee consumer savings, or establish actual utility eligibility.

Review boundary: complete final act, history, all versions, failed amendment, Senate packet, fiscal notes and referenced historical rate/jurisdiction statutes were checked. This explanation does not certify current PUC rules, any company’s election, approved charges, project completion or actual refunds.

Sources: latest fiscal note; HB1620, section 22.001(67), renumbering.

Official sources

Catalog report retrieved 2026-10-25. Check the official record for corrections or later changes.