Oncor delivery charges for businesses (2026)

What are Oncor delivery charges?

Oncor owns the poles, wires and meters that deliver electricity in its service area. It does not sell electricity. Your retail electricity provider buys the power, sells it to you and sends the bill.

Oncor charges your provider for delivering and metering that power, and your provider passes those delivery charges on to you. The rates come from Oncor’s Tariff for Retail Delivery Service, which is approved by the Public Utility Commission of Texas. They apply whichever provider you choose. Your provider may show them as one line or several.

Which rate class is my business on?

Most businesses fall into one of two Oncor rate classes for secondary service, which is the standard voltage most buildings take.

• Secondary Service Less Than or Equal to 10 kW. Small sites. Apart from two fixed monthly charges, the delivery charges are priced on the kWh you use.
• Secondary Service Greater Than 10 kW. Sites with commercial kitchens, refrigeration or larger air conditioning often fall here. Most delivery charges are priced on your peak demand in kW.

A site moves up to the larger class the month after it records demand above 12 kW, or after it records demand above 10 kW three times in a rolling 12 months. It moves back only after 12 consecutive billing months with no demand above 10 kW.

What each Oncor charge pays for.

For a site on Secondary Service Greater Than 10 kW, Oncor’s delivery charges are made up of the following. The prices change between rate cases: new base rates took effect June 1, 2026, the TCRF and DCRF riders were revised on October 4, 2026, and Rider IS runs through December 2026. The current amounts, each with its sheet date, are in the next section.

On the smaller class, the same charges are priced per kWh instead of per kW, apart from the fixed customer and metering charges.

What Oncor charges right now.

From the tariff sheets in force on October 31, 2026. Sites at or below 10 kW pay per kWh; sites above 10 kW pay mostly per kW of demand, with the distribution price depending on load factor (the band table is in the ratchet section above). The Texas prices page holds the same tables beside CenterPoint’s and the state averages.

Worked month, as an illustration only: a site with a 50 kW peak that is also its billing kW, 15,000 kWh, lowest distribution band, pays about $742 in Oncor charges, or 4.9 cents per kWh before supply, taxes and fees.

How Oncor measures your peak.

Oncor measures demand in 15-minute intervals. Your NCP kW for the month is the kW supplied during the 15-minute period of highest use in that billing month. Oncor compares it to a car’s speedometer: the meter keeps the highest mark of the month and resets at the end of each billing cycle.

Our guide to demand charges explains the difference between demand (kW) and usage (kWh) in more detail.

The 80% ratchet.

For larger sites, the distribution charge is not always based on this month’s peak. If your site’s highest peak in the previous 11 months was above 20 kW and its annual load factor is above 25%, the billing kW for the Distribution System Charge is the higher of:

• this month’s NCP kW, or
• 80% of the highest monthly NCP kW in the previous 11 months.

So one very high peak in the summer can keep your distribution charge up for the rest of the year. Sites whose previous 11-month peak was 20 kW or less, and sites with an annual load factor of 25% or less, are billed on the current month’s peak instead. This follows the Texas rule that a demand ratchet may not apply to nonresidential secondary customers with a load factor of 25% or less.

Several riders, including the Nuclear Decommissioning Charge and the Distribution Cost Recovery Factor, use the 80% ratchet for every site on this rate class.

Load factor and the price per kW.

Load factor compares your average use with your peak. A business that runs steadily all day has a high load factor; one with short, sharp peaks has a low one. Oncor calculates it for each site from the 12 billing months ending in December, and uses it for the next 12 billing months:

kWh used in the 12 months ÷ (highest NCP kW in those months × days in the billing periods × 24)

Above 20 kW, the Distribution System Charge per kW depends on that load factor:

A low load factor means a higher price per kW but no 80% ratchet; a high load factor means the lowest price per kW but the ratchet applies. Sites with less than 90 days of history are treated as having a load factor above 25%.

4CP for large sites.

A site that has reached 700 kW or more in any previous billing month is billed the Transmission Cost Recovery Factor on its 4CP kW instead of its monthly peak. 4CP kW is the average of the site’s demand at the moment of ERCOT’s system peak in each of June, July, August and September of the previous year. Oncor updates it every January 1 and keeps it fixed for the year.

That is why large sites try to cut use on the hottest summer afternoons. Sites below 700 kW are billed the Transmission Cost Recovery Factor on their own monthly peak.

What you can and cannot change.

A new supply contract does not change Oncor’s delivery charges; they apply whichever provider you choose. What you can influence is the demand those charges are priced on:

• Check the rate class on your bill, and whether a site sits just above 10 kW.
• Stagger equipment start-up so ovens, compressors and air conditioning do not all start in the same 15 minutes.
• Watch the demand line each month and tie a high reading to what happened that day, especially in summer, when one peak can carry into the next 11 months.

When we review a bill, we compare the supply charges and flag the delivery charges so you see the whole picture. For a site in Houston, see our guide to CenterPoint delivery charges. For a Dallas-Fort Worth site, start with your ZIP and add your bill when you have it.