The Texas Electric Choice Act (1999's Senate Bill 7) required investor-owned utilities to open their service areas to retail electric competition in 2002. It also allowed electric cooperatives (like Nueces Electric Co-op) and municipal electric systems to choose to open their service areas to retail electric competition or they could choose to leave their services areas as is - with no choice of retail electricity providers for their customers.

Members Speak

At its 2000 Annual Membership Meeting, Nueces Electric Co-op (NEC) conducted a straw poll of its members . The poll asked NEC customers if they wanted NEC to open its service area to retail electric competition. A large majority of the attending members voted that "Yes, NEC should open its area to competition."

NEC Board Considers the Change

The NEC Board of Directors listened to the members and asked an important question, "what exactly would this change require?" A large portion of the answer rested in the fact that NEC would have to join other competitive market participants in special electronic processing of transactions and would need to become an official "market participant" through special testing with the state coordinator of Texas retail electric competition, ERCOT. The system programming costs were reviewed with our vendors and partners. The management and directors of NEC discovered that the cost to open the NEC service area to competition was very high. The management and directors began to identify possible options that could make this change financially feasible for Nueces Electric Co-op & its member-consumers.

NEC's Role After It Opens Its Service Area to Retail Electric Competiton

It's important to understand that when NEC opens its service area to competition, its members can choose who they want to supply their electric power. NEC, however, will continue to be the only distribution service provider (DSP). This means that NEC will continue to build and maintain the power lines and wires-- that deliver the power members choose-- to the members' homes and businesses.  NEC will be the only company in the NEC service area that respond to outages, install meters, and builds power lines. NEC will also continue to mail its bills, allocate and pay capital credits, and respond to many of your electric service needs.

The Decision That Makes Competition Feasible for NEC & its Members

NEC is a not-for-profit, member-owned corporation. So, when a decision is made to spend money at NEC, there has to be a benefit to our members before we will move forward. Ultimately members pay the cost through their service rates and fees and NEC is very careful to make decisions about the money it spends. As NEC management and directors reviewed the cost to open the area to competition they looked at the service area in terms of the number of members that NEC serves. NEC decided that in order to open its service area to competition, NEC needed more members to share such a cost burden or else electric rates would need to be raised to a level that management and the NEC directors believe to be too high. As an alternative, NEC decided to pursue settlement  (division) of the shared service areas with AEP Texas Central Company, concurrently with the opening of its service area to competition. Once the shared service area is divided, NEC will gain approximately 4,000 new distribution service customers. With the additional members this settlement brings, NEC could financially justify the opening of its service area for electric competition.

If the service territory settlement is approved, NEC will begin to fully open its service area to retail competition. NEC will also be your source for up-to-date provider lists when you decide to shop for a new competitive retail electric provider. This website will be updated periodically and is your source for customer choice information when your service is located in the Nueces Electric Co-op service area.