Dallas business energy: Oncor and Atmos

Two delivery utilities, and the half of the bill neither one sells

Dallas sits inside Oncor Electric Delivery Company LLC's certified service area. The company's Tariff for Retail Delivery Service carries a chapter listing the counties and cities it serves, and Dallas, Tarrant, Collin, Denton, Ellis, Kaufman, Rockwall and Johnson are all named there, filed from an office on Woodall Rodgers in the city itself. Gas is Atmos Energy Corporation's Mid-Tex Division, a separate company under a separate regulator. What the two have in common is that neither sells the commodity: Oncor's tariff governs the wires, the meters and the terms of access, and its delivery charges are approved by the Public Utility Commission of Texas, while Atmos files Mid-Tex rates with the Railroad Commission and, for addresses inside a city, with the city. The competitive half is supply alone — a retail electric provider for the kWh, and for gas a marketer under a transportation agreement where the site qualifies.

• Oncor Electric Delivery Company LLC is the electric delivery utility; its tariff governs wires, meters and connection terms, and the Commission approves its delivery rates.
• Atmos Energy's Mid-Tex Division delivers Dallas gas and files rates with the Railroad Commission and, inside city limits, the city.
• Nothing on the delivery half of either bill is negotiable at the account level. Offers compete for supply only.
• Being in the delivery territory is not the same as being eligible. The meter and the rate schedule decide that.

Oncor bills energy at or below 10 kW and billing demand above it

Oncor's delivery charges are published as separate rate schedules, and the line that matters to a commercial site is drawn at 10 kW. Secondary Service Less Than or Equal to 10 kW is billed on energy: fixed customer and metering charges plus a distribution system charge per kWh. Secondary Service Greater Than 10 kW is billed on demand: customer and metering charges plus a distribution system charge per billing kW, with the transmission component taken on NCP kW or on 4CP kW. Oncor's own Delivery Charges 101 page describes the same split from the rate factor side — a factor multiplied by kWh on the smaller class and by billing kW on the larger one. A 40 kW shop and a 9 kW office are not on the same arithmetic with a bigger number; they are on different schedules, and one of them is priced on how much it draws rather than how much it uses.

• At or below 10 kW the distribution charge is per kWh, so usage volume shows up on the delivery line.
• Above 10 kW the distribution charge is per billing kW, so the site's peak shows up instead.
• Oncor explains kW as the highest demand recorded over a fifteen-minute period in the billing month.
• Meter multipliers exist because a register's capacity can represent a fraction of the real load; read the multiplier before treating a demand figure as comparable.

The class is assigned by the meter, and the way back is slow

Oncor's schedules are not options a business picks at sign-up, and the change is not reviewed every month. The tariff says a premises on the at-or-below 10 kW schedule that uses 3,500 kWh or more in a month will have a demand meter installed to test continued eligibility, and that any recorded demand above 10 kW in a later month moves the premises to the Secondary Greater Than 10 kW schedule. The company's own guidance covers the return trip: the premises must hold a load at or below 10 kW for twelve consecutive months before it moves back. For a Dallas operator the practical reading is that a seasonal spike has a durable effect. Add a compressor, a second shift or a kitchen's worth of equipment and the account can change class and stay changed, because the evidence needed to move back takes a year to accumulate.

• 3,500 kWh in a month triggers demand-meter installation on an at-or-below 10 kW premises.
• Any recorded demand above 10 kW after that moves the premises to the greater-than 10 kW schedule.
• Twelve consecutive months at or below 10 kW is the documented route back down.
• A site that has changed equipment should confirm its schedule on the bill before comparing supply offers.

Load factor and the ratchet decide what a demand-billed Dallas site pays for delivery

Inside Secondary Greater Than 10 kW, the distribution system charge is not one number per kW. The tariff publishes it by annual load factor band, from 0% to 10% at the top of the table down to 26% and above at the bottom, with a separate row for premises whose NCP is 20 kW or less. Load factor itself is computed from the twelve billing months ending with the December cycle and then applies for the following twelve months, and a premises with less than ninety days of billing history is assumed to sit above 25%. Billing kW does not always follow the current month either. For the transmission cost, nuclear decommissioning and rate case expense riders, the tariff bills on the higher of the current month's NCP or 80% of the highest monthly NCP in the preceding eleven months, and the distribution charge is billed the same way for premises whose load factor is above 25%. A premises at or below 20 kW, or at a load factor of 25% or lower, has the distribution charge billed on the current month's NCP alone, while the riders carry the ratchet regardless. Flattening the load therefore changes a delivery charge that no supplier can change.

• The distribution charge per billing kW rises as annual load factor falls, so a spiky site pays more per kW than a steady one.
• Load factor is set from the twelve months ending in December and then holds for the next twelve months.
• Under ninety days of history the premises is assumed to exceed a 25% load factor.
• Transmission, nuclear decommissioning and rate case expense riders are billed on no less than 80% of the preceding eleven months' highest NCP.

4CP: one threshold, two billing methods on the same street

Oncor takes its transmission component either on NCP kW or on 4CP kW, and the tariff documents the trigger rather than leaving it to negotiation. Any premises that has established an NCP of at least 700 kW in any previous billing month, or that was already being billed on 4CP, is billed on 4CP going forward. The 4CP value is the average of the customer's integrated fifteen-minute demands at the time of the monthly ERCOT system peak in June, July, August and September of the previous calendar year; it is set on 1 January and holds for the year, and a customer with no history is billed on NCP until there is a 4CP to apply. The Commission's monthly TDU report for Oncor shows the second reason two similar sites can bill differently: premises above 10 kW appear in an interval-data-recorder class and a separate non-IDR class, and the 4CP component sits on the IDR side. A quoted demand figure means little until the account's class and transmission method are both known.

• The tariff's trigger is an NCP of at least 700 kW in any previous billing month, or a prior 4CP history.
• 4CP rests on four summer intervals rather than twelve months of demand, and updates each 1 January.
• The Commission publishes Oncor's authorized rates and classes monthly, including the IDR and non-IDR split above 10 kW.
• Two Dallas sites with the same monthly peak can sit on different transmission methods, so demand comparisons need the method attached.

What ERCOT's planning record says about load in Dallas County

Dallas load sits in ERCOT's North Central weather zone, and the transmission record for the metro is about relieving named local limits rather than adding capacity in the abstract. When the ERCOT board took up the Oncor Wilmer 345/138-kV switch project in early 2025, the independent review behind it had identified thermal and voltage violations in Dallas, Kaufman and Ellis counties: overloads on 29.3 miles of 138-kV line and 10.7 miles of 69-kV line, two 345/138-kV transformers, eleven voltage violations and two unsolved power flows. The project was endorsed as a Tier 1 regional planning group project, with an expected in-service date of May 2026 at the time of the filing. Demand growth is the other half of the record: ERCOT's large-load status update to its Technical Advisory Committee in March 2026 reported 137 new large-load submissions amounting to roughly 140,000 MW by 2036, while noting that cancellations had pulled the queue totals down slightly. For a buyer the useful conclusion is directional rather than numerical — the delivery system and the interconnection queue are part of a Dallas project's timeline, not an afterthought to it.

• ERCOT's board reviewed the Oncor Wilmer 345/138-kV switch project as a Tier 1 project addressing Dallas, Kaufman and Ellis county violations.
• The violations ERCOT identified were thermal and voltage, on 138-kV and 69-kV facilities and two 345/138-kV transformers.
• ERCOT's March 2026 large-load update counted 137 new submissions, roughly 140,000 MW by 2036, with cancellations trimming the totals.
• New or expanded Dallas sites should treat interconnection timing as part of the project schedule.

Dallas gas: Rate C, Rate I, or your own supply under Rate T

Atmos sells Mid-Tex gas under three schedules that matter to a Dallas business. Rate C covers commercial customers and industrial customers whose average annual usage is below 30,000 Ccf, at one point of delivery measured through one meter. Rate I covers industrial customers with a maximum daily usage below 200 MMBtu a day; at or above that, service is at the company's option under special contract terms. Rate T is transportation: the customer buys its own gas and Atmos delivers it, under a transportation agreement, for a customer directly connected to the Mid-Tex distribution system. Transportation is not open to every load. The tariff closes it to customers with a maximum daily demand of 1,000 MMBtu or more and a daily or annual load factor of 10% or less, where load factor is annual usage divided by maximum daily connected demand times 365 and is recalculated once a year. Service under it is wholly interruptible, and the Mid-Tex filing treats a commercial customer as a candidate at Atmos's discretion only where it has standby fuel equipment of at least the capacity normally required, fuel in storage for the interruption, and an annual certification each 1 October that both are in working order.

• Rate C is system supply for commercial customers, and for industrial customers under 30,000 Ccf of average annual usage.
• Rate I ends at a maximum daily usage of 200 MMBtu; above that, service requires special contract arrangements.
• Rate T requires a transportation agreement and is closed to the largest, flattest loads — 1,000 MMBtu a day or more at a load factor of 10% or less.
• Transportation is interruptible, and a commercial customer qualifies at the company's discretion with standby fuel, stored fuel and a 1 October certification.
• Imbalance fees under transportation are charged per agreement and are not aggregated across a customer's agreements.

Why the gas bill carries a franchise line and an October review date

Rate C's monthly bill is built from a customer charge and a commodity charge plus riders: gas cost recovery for gas costs and upstream transportation, a weather normalization adjustment, a franchise fee adjustment that applies only to customers inside the corporate limits of an incorporated municipality, and a tax adjustment. Two of those matter commercially. Gas cost recovery is the pass-through that a marketer's price replaces when a site moves to transportation, and the franchise line is the reason a Dallas address inside the city limits and one in unincorporated Dallas County are on different sheets of the same tariff. Delivery rates for addresses inside a city come through the city's review of the company's annual rate review mechanism filing, with an effective date of 1 October: if the regulatory authority takes no action by 30 September, the filed rates are deemed approved effective 1 October, and the city rather than the customer is the party positioned to act. Customers outside city limits are the Commission's directly. Weather normalization adjusts the delivery line for weather, which is why a mild winter is not by itself evidence that a site's usage pattern changed.

• The gas bill is a customer charge, a commodity charge and riders including gas cost recovery and the weather normalization adjustment.
• The franchise fee adjustment applies only inside an incorporated municipality, which splits city-limit from unincorporated sites.
• Mid-Tex delivery rates come through an annual filing effective 1 October, deemed approved if no action is taken by 30 September.
• A rate question inside a city runs through the city first; unincorporated addresses sit directly with the Commission.
• Weather normalization means a mild winter does not by itself prove that a site's usage pattern changed.

What to assemble before a Dallas quote is worth building

Both halves of a Dallas bill are quoted from the same kind of evidence, and assembling it first is what keeps a comparison honest. For electricity, that means twelve consecutive months of kWh with the kW demand where the bills show it, the account and meter numbers, the meter multiplier, the current contract's end date and its notice period, and the delivery schedule and transmission method printed on the bill. For gas, it means twelve months of usage in Ccf or Mcf, the rate schedule on the bill, and the property's location against the city limits, because that decides the franchise line. HighGround works as an advisor-assisted channel rather than a rate table, sourcing electricity and gas supply through the Broker Online Exchange supplier network and the adjacent categories through the AppDirect ecosystem. HighGround may receive provider compensation on completed purchases, and an inquiry places no order and switches no supplier.

• Twelve months of kWh, plus kW demand where the bills show it, and the account and meter numbers.
• The delivery schedule and transmission method on the electric bill, and the meter multiplier where one is shown.
• Twelve months of gas usage in Ccf or Mcf, the rate schedule on the gas bill, and whether the site is inside city limits.
• The current contracts' end dates and the notices required to leave them.
• Competitive supply depends on the service address, the meter and the utility territory; municipal utilities, cooperatives and some jurisdictions have no choice at all.
• HighGround may receive provider compensation on completed purchases, and an inquiry places no order and switches no supplier.

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