Woodlands-area homeowners and small businesses could see fewer rate increases on their electric bills over the next decade after CenterPoint Energy announced a $5 billion savings initiative on Tuesday, Aug. 11.
The utility's "Customer Savings Initiative" shifts roughly $5 billion in infrastructure costs that would have been passed on as rate increases to residential and small business customers. Instead, large energy users like data centers and cryptocurrency operations will shoulder those expenses under a new state law.
"We have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to generate historic levels of customer savings of more than $5 billion statewide by leveraging new investment in large projects to build a more affordable, reliable and resilient electric grid for millions of customers," CenterPoint Chairman and CEO Jason Wells said in the company's announcement.
How it works
The initiative is driven by Senate Bill 6, passed during the 89th Texas Legislative Session, which requires any facility expecting to use more than 75 megawatts of power to pay higher energy costs, Community Impact reported. The law also requires data centers and crypto banks to pay study fees so providers can prepare for their energy demands.
CenterPoint plans to add up to 14 gigawatts of new large-load projects to its grid. As those data centers and industrial users connect, they'll pay the infrastructure costs that historically got spread across all customers as rate increases.
The Woodlands falls within CenterPoint's electric delivery service area, which covers roughly 5,000 square miles and serves nearly 2.9 million Greater Houston customers. As of September 2025, residential customers in the service area pay a fixed monthly charge of $4.90 and a variable delivery rate of about 5.81 cents per kilowatt-hour, according to Public Utility Commission of Texas filings.
CenterPoint says its Greater Houston customers already pay the lowest infrastructure charges of any investor-owned electric utility in Texas. The infrastructure portion of bills rose just over 1% per year between 2014 and 2025, below the national inflation rate.
State pressure on data centers
The initiative follows broader state action. Gov. Greg Abbott directed the Public Utility Commission of Texas on June 10 to require data centers to fully fund the electric infrastructure needed to serve their operations. On Aug. 3, Abbott ordered a comprehensive audit of all data centers advancing through ERCOT's interconnection process.
The stakes are real. Data center demand has contributed to a roughly 25% surge in Texas residential power prices over the past five years, Forbes reported.
Abbott spokesman Andrew Mahaleris told the Houston Chronicle on July 28 that the governor "has been clear that data centers cannot come before Texas families."
What's ahead
The $5 billion figure is a projection through 2036, based on CenterPoint's assumptions about how many large-load projects will connect to the grid. The company has not released a per-customer savings estimate.
The 90th Texas Legislature convenes Jan. 12, 2027, when lawmakers could take up additional data center regulations, including a possible repeal of the state's data center sales tax exemption, now estimated to cost $3.3 billion in the 2028-2029 biennium.
