Texas Wants to Freeze Electric Rates. Why Beauregard Electric Customers Should Pay Attention.

337.NEWS | November 9, 2026 | Energy & Utilities

Texas voters elected Gina Hinojosa as their next governor on November 3. Among her campaign promises is declaring a “high-cost emergency,” suspending state gasoline and diesel taxes, and freezing residential electricity rates.

For Texas households struggling with utility bills, the proposal has obvious appeal.

But there's a question nobody in Southwest Louisiana should overlook.

What happens when Texas freezes what customers pay for electricity, but the economic consequences don't necessarily stop at the state line?

If you're a Beauregard Electric Cooperative customer, this isn't as far from your electric bill as it might sound.

Your cooperative is a member of 1803 Electric Cooperative, a Louisiana wholesale electricity provider whose transmission operations are integrated into the same regional power market as Entergy Texas.

That market is called MISO, the Midcontinent Independent System Operator.

And decisions that weaken investment or reduce economic efficiencies in one part of that system could affect participants elsewhere, including Louisiana.

The connection is documented. Whether the proposed Texas policy would actually cause financial harm in Louisiana has not been established.

Your electric cooperative is part of a regional power market

Beauregard Electric is one of the member cooperatives served by 1803 Electric Cooperative. The organization began serving members in 2025 and says its member cooperatives collectively serve approximately 500,000 Louisiana consumers.

1803's role extends beyond arranging wholesale power. It says its transmission system is integrated into MISO and that it operates as a local balancing authority within the regional organization.

Sources: 1803's member list and 1803's organizational history.

MISO coordinates wholesale electricity markets and transmission across parts of 15 states, including Louisiana and Southeast Texas. While much of Texas operates within ERCOT, Entergy Texas participates in MISO.

Sources: Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's MISO overview and Entergy Texas's explanation of its MISO participation.

That means Beauregard Electric customers and Entergy Texas customers aren't served by the same utility, but their utilities participate in a common regional system for important parts of electricity operations and economics.

Entergy Texas says MISO saved its customers $475 million

Entergy Texas says its participation in MISO saved its customers approximately $475 million between 2014 and 2022. It credits resource sharing and the ability to maintain reliability with less generating capacity than it would need operating alone.

Source: Entergy Texas, “Power where it's needed”.

This is the economic argument that matters to Louisiana.

The benefit of a regional market isn't just that power can cross a state line. It is that numerous utilities can coordinate resources, dispatch generation economically, share reserve capacity, and plan transmission around a larger system.

If one participant faces regulatory conditions that impair investment, those benefits could diminish. That doesn't necessarily mean its neighbors pay its bills. It can mean the shared market becomes less efficient than it otherwise would have been.

You don't have to transfer a dollar of utility debt across a state line to impose an economic consequence across that line.

What a Texas rate freeze might actually do

Electricity rates don't move in lockstep with the costs of running a utility. Fuel, equipment, maintenance, financing, transmission, and new generation can become more expensive even when customer rates are held steady.

How the proposed freeze is structured will determine what happens next.

If the freeze prevents a regulated utility from recovering legitimate costs without providing a replacement mechanism, it could squeeze cash flow and discourage or delay investment. If investors demand a higher return for regulatory uncertainty, the utility's financing costs might rise as well.

Those are conditional risks, not outcomes already documented in Texas.

A freeze could also be implemented with explicit protections for utility cost recovery, limited durations, or separate treatment of wholesale costs and infrastructure investments. Some costs might be assigned to data centers and other large-load customers instead of households. The final design matters enormously.

Hinojosa has said she wants to direct the Texas Public Utility Commission to freeze residential rates until lawmakers establish rules requiring data centers and other large electricity users to pay for themselves. That policy goal is different from simply ordering utilities to operate at a loss.

Source: Troutman Pepper Locke analysis of Hinojosa's stated proposal.

How could Louisiana be affected?

There are three plausible channels, each of which needs to be tested against the details of the eventual Texas policy.

First, generation and resource adequacy. If rate restrictions materially slow a participating utility's investment in generation or firm capacity, the regional system could lose expected supply or reliability benefits. That could influence market prices or procurement decisions elsewhere. But a retail freeze alone does not remove a generator from MISO or automatically change the regional wholesale price.

Second, transmission investment. Regional power markets need transmission improvements to move electricity economically. If projects are postponed or revised because a participating utility cannot finance them as planned, the resulting congestion or lost efficiency can have effects beyond the utility's retail territory. Whether any particular Louisiana zone experiences that effect is a matter for modeling and evidence, not assumption.

Third, cost allocation. Certain transmission projects and services are recovered under MISO's federally regulated tariff. Those rules govern which customers pay for which facilities. A Texas governor cannot unilaterally impose Entergy Texas's retail revenue shortfall on 1803 or Beauregard Electric. But changes to actual projects, regional benefits, or market transactions can affect costs under existing rules.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission explains that utilities retain ownership of their transmission assets while MISO operates those assets under federal oversight.

The Louisiana connection is in regulatory records

The cooperative relationship isn't speculation. Louisiana Public Service Commission records identify Beauregard Electric as a party to proceedings governing 1803's wholesale rates and member power contracts.

The LPSC also has an open proceeding addressing 1803 transmission facilities and the transfer of their functional control to MISO.

• LPSC Docket U-36268: 1803 wholesale formula rate and member wholesale power contracts
• LPSC Docket U-37441: 1803 transmission facilities and MISO functional control
• LPSC Docket U-35927: 1803 power purchase agreements and cost recovery

MISO's published tariff index, updated October 26, 2026, also lists a joint pricing-zone agreement for Entergy Louisiana and 1803 and another for Cleco and 1803. These are additional evidence of 1803's participation in regulated regional transmission arrangements. They are not proof that a future Texas rate freeze would increase Louisiana cooperative bills.

Source: MISO tariff index, Rate Schedules 65 and 66.

Why this is not just a Texas political story

The election was in Texas. The electricity system is regional.

Hinojosa's proposal may give Texas homeowners relief. If it is carefully designed and shifts costs properly onto new large-load developments, it could also protect consumers without compromising investment.

But if a rate freeze weakens utilities' ability or willingness to contribute economically useful resources to MISO, some of the lost benefits could be felt outside Texas. Louisiana's cooperative members have an interest in whether that happens.

That includes families and businesses served by Beauregard Electric, even though they didn't cast a vote in the Texas governor's race.

The question isn't whether Louisiana will automatically pay Texas's electric bills. It is whether Louisiana consumers could lose some of the economic benefits of the shared regional grid because of a decision made in another state.

Before anyone claims that this will raise Louisiana rates, there are questions regulators and utilities need to answer:

• Will the Texas freeze apply to Entergy Texas, a vertically integrated utility outside the main ERCOT retail-choice market, and which components of its approved rates would actually be frozen?
• Would fuel adjustments, purchased-power costs, new capital investment, and transmission charges remain recoverable?
• Has MISO evaluated any resource-adequacy, congestion, or transmission-planning effects from such a policy in MISO South?
• How exposed are 1803's wholesale purchases, transmission charges, and long-term power contracts to changes in MISO South market conditions?
• What protections would the Louisiana Public Service Commission require before any regional effects were passed through to cooperative members?

Until the policy is written, approved, and its impact evaluated, the answer remains uncertain.

But the connection between a Texas utility and your Louisiana cooperative already exists. It is documented in the records of 1803, MISO, and the Louisiana Public Service Commission.

That's reason enough for Southwest Louisiana to pay attention before the first executive order is signed.

Related reporting

Louisiana's Fast-Track Power Rule Faces a Lawsuit. The Commission Was Warned About the Financial Risks.

The Data Center Power Fight Is Moving From Policy to Grid Operations

Sources and public records

1. Texas Tribune, November 4, 2026: Hinojosa's immediate policy promises
2. 1803 Electric Cooperative: Who We Are
3. 1803 Electric Cooperative: Our Members
4. Entergy Texas: MISO participation and reported savings
5. FERC: MISO regional market overview
6. FERC: How MISO operates utility-owned transmission
7. LPSC U-36268: 1803 wholesale rate and power contracts
8. LPSC U-37441: 1803 and MISO transmission control
9. LPSC U-35927: Power supply and cost recovery
10. MISO tariff: 1803 joint pricing-zone agreements
11. Legal review of proposed Texas utility policies, November 2026
12. 337.NEWS Louisiana Public Records Repository