Texas utility regulators approved the state’s first 765,000-volt transmission lines on Aug. 28, clearing Oncor to build 424 miles of them across 32 West Texas counties at a cost of about $3.9 billion — and in the same orders they threw out an administrative law judges’ finding that the utility had failed to give some landowners the notice the rules require.
The Public Utility Commission of Texas issued two final orders that afternoon. One approves Route 559, running 242 miles from a new switchyard about three miles north of Glen Rose to another about four and a half miles west of Forsan, crossing 22 counties from Somervell west to Howard. The other approves Route 476, running about 182 miles further west through 10 counties, from Forsan out to Loving County on the New Mexico line. At 765,000 volts, the lines are the highest-capacity design built anywhere in the country; nothing above 345,000 volts exists in Texas today.
Route 559 is expected to cost $2.24 billion while Route 476 is estimated at about $1.7 billion. The commission found both figures reasonable.
The most contested question was not where the lines go but whether the landowners in their path were told in time. The judges who heard the case at the State Office of Administrative Hearings found Oncor had violated the commission’s rule requiring public meetings before an application is filed, because the company added and modified route segments after holding its three public meetings in June 2025 without holding new ones. By the chairman’s own count, roughly 1,650 landowners on those added or modified segments received no public-meeting notice.
The commission disagreed and deleted the judges’ findings on the point, holding that the rule requires only one public meeting before filing. In a memorandum circulated to the other commissioners the day before the vote, Chairman Thomas Gleeson wrote that the judges’ recommendation “contains some incorrect statements about the law, which conflict with Commission precedent.”
He did not dispute how it felt to the people affected. “I recognize that many landowners feel that this was not enough,” he wrote. “Because Oncor did not hold additional public meetings, many landowners feel they were disadvantaged in this process as compared to their neighbors. But the Commission must consistently apply the law, and the Commission cannot hold a utility responsible for not taking actions that go beyond what is required in a statute or rule.”
Gleeson paired that with a concession written into both orders. Ordinarily a utility may shift a line only slightly once approved. The new provision lets Oncor move it further than that when every affected landowner agrees, whether or not those owners ever got notice or took part in the case, so long as the line stays on a reasonably direct path without unreasonable added cost or delay. “I believe the integrity of these types of properties should be preserved and property boundaries respected whenever possible,” Gleeson wrote. “Oncor should avoid bisecting properties when reasonable accommodations can be made.”
Route 559 passes within 500 feet of 102 occupied buildings and runs roughly 100 miles without a single landowner in the case objecting to it. Route 476 — the route both Oncor and commission staff had preferred — passes within 500 feet of three.
A third line, the 370-mile Howard-to-Solstice project proposed by AEP Texas and CPS Energy, was on the same agenda and was held back. The commission’s judge reopened the evidentiary record that day to admit a late affidavit, and the commissioners put the case over to a future meeting. “Like we did with previous dockets, I think we have a lot to go back and go through,” Gleeson said, according to the San Antonio Express-News.
The commission had settled the underlying question a week earlier, consolidating the two Oncor cases on Aug. 21 and finding “that the preponderance of the evidence establishes the need for the transmission lines and associated facilities.” It then split them apart again to decide the routes separately.
Oncor said in a statement to The Dallas Morning News that the decision “aligns with what years of engineering studies by our state’s grid experts have repeatedly concluded, that these projects are essential to the reliability of electric service in West Texas and to the overall stability of the ERCOT grid,” and that it takes landowners’ feedback seriously.
Louis Newsom of the Office of Public Utility Counsel, the state office representing residential customers, told the commission the schedule was the problem. “The largest obstacle we have seen in this proceeding is the compressed timeline,” he said, per the Express-News. “A landowner unfamiliar with this process only had 17 days from learning of this requirement to dismissal from the case.” Amanda Griffin, vice president of the Hill Country Preservation Coalition, which opposes the lines, said rural voters “are awakened” and “prepared to clean house in November.”
Commissioner Courtney Hjaltman addressed the landowners in the room directly. “I understand the proceedings are not just about infrastructure to you,” she said, according to the Texas Tribune. “They’re about your land. They’re about something deeply personal.”
Attorney General Ken Paxton asked the commission to pause the whole program pending the next legislative session — but his brief was filed Friday afternoon, after the meeting had adjourned.
Four of the commission’s five members signed each order: Gleeson and Commissioners Kathleen Jackson, Hjaltman and Patrick Rhode. No dissent was filed. Oncor’s authority expires seven years from the signing date unless the lines are carrying power by then.