PUC approves plan for Hunt group to buy Oncor — effect on electric rates won’t be clear for about a year

Dallas Morning News - Biz Beat Blog - March 23, 2016 12:35 pm

By Jeffrey Weiss

Texas electric power customers will need to wait a year or so to find out if a buyout plan of Oncor approved Thursday by the Public Utility Commission will affect their rates.

In fact, there are still questions about whether conditions imposed by the PUC will challenge the plan crafted by a group of investors led by Dallas billionaire Ray L. Hunt and his son, Hunter Hunt.

The Hunt group wants to buy part of the state’s largest utility. Energy Future Holdings went into bankruptcy in 2014. The Hunt group wants one piece: Oncor, which owns about 119,000 miles of transmission and distribution lines that deliver power to more than three million homes and businesses in North and West Texas.

Rates are not supposed to go up because of the deal, if it goes through. Whether rates might go down and by how much was left unresolved in the PUC order.

For legal reasons, there’s a hard deadline of March 27 for the PUC either to set conditions on the plan or have no input. So Thursday’s meeting was its last shot.

For more: 

http://bizbeatblog.dallasnews.com/2016/03/puc-texas-hunt-oncor-public-utility-commission.html/