The Public Utility Commission of Texas will meet Aug. 28 to settle the route of a 370-mile power line from San Antonio to the Permian Basin, the first of three high-voltage paths the state approved out of the oil field to reach a decision.
AEP Texas and CPS Energy applied in March to build the line at 765 kilovolts, the highest voltage on the North American grid, on towers 140 to 160 feet tall inside a 200-foot corridor, running from a CPS station in southwest Bexar County to an AEP station in Pecos County. They gave the commission 77 possible routes to choose among. State administrative law judges heard four days of testimony in May and in late July recommended the companies’ own preferred route, putting the cost of the project at $2.8 billion to $3.1 billion.
The case drew more than 600 landowners, businesses and local governments as parties and more than 260 protests and comments, by a tally published in the Hill Country Community Journal. U.S. Rep. Chip Roy and state Reps. Eddie Morales Jr. and Wes Virdell filed against it, and the commissioners courts of Kerr, Edwards, Real and Val Verde counties intervened. Bandera County had gone further a year earlier, its commissioners adopting a resolution against the line anywhere in the county. A motion to pause the case and two requests for oral argument were on file as of Aug. 20.
The line is the third of three paths the commission chose in April 2025 to carry Permian Basin power east, under a plan the Legislature ordered in 2023. Pressure to abandon all of them has grown. After a Senate hearing July 29, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Sen. Charles Schwertner, who chairs the Senate business committee, urged the commission to deny the permits. At the same hearing the grid operator’s chief operating officer told senators that rolling blackouts in the oil field are possible as soon as next year. KUT has reported the commission must act on this case by the end of August.
The two Oncor cases that make up the second path are on the same agenda, a week after commissioners took them up Aug. 21. Public comment opens the meeting, three minutes a speaker, but may not touch any of the three cases, which are closed to one-sided contact with the decision-makers. Watch whether the commission decides all three or, as it did with one of the Oncor lines in June, pauses instead.
Meeting at a glance
- When
- 9:30 a.m. CT Friday, August 28, 2026. The notice was filed August 20.
- Where
- Stephen F. Austin Building, Room 170, 1700 Congress Ave., Austin — not the commission’s own hearing room on North Congress Avenue. It is the second meeting in a row held elsewhere.
- Governing body & chair
- Public Utility Commission of Texas — five commissioners the governor appoints with Senate consent to staggered six-year terms. Thomas J. Gleeson is chairman.
- Format
- In person. Public comment first, three minutes a speaker, and barred from the three contested cases. The commission may recess to closed session on litigation, personnel and security, then reconvene in the open.
- Live video
- Streamed and archived on AdminMonitor
- Full agenda
- Secretary of State Open Meeting Viewer · commission agenda, control numbers 59029, 59315 and 59336
Commissioners
- Thomas J. Gleeson — chairman; Pflugerville; former commission executive director.
- Kathleen Jackson — Beaumont area; engineer, commissioner since 2022.
- Courtney K. Hjaltman — commissioner since 2024; former public counsel for ratepayers.
- Morgan Johnson — Austin; former deputy general counsel in the governor’s office.
- Patrick Rhode — Dripping Springs; consultant and former federal official.
Roster from the commission’s commissioners page, read August 21, 2026, and cross-checked against the governor’s appointment releases. The governor’s release describes Patrick Rhode as “of Austin”; his commission biography says Dripping Springs, and the article follows the biography. No hometown is published for Courtney Hjaltman. Meeting contact: Ruby D. Hicks, (512) 936-7249.