Southlake Mayor Shawn McCaskill has filed a formal complaint against Tri-County Electric Cooperative with the Public Utility Commission of Texas, citing months of power outages that have hit homes, schools, and local businesses across the city. The complaint, mailed on Tuesday, was filed on behalf of the mayor's office and the Carroll ISD board president, according to the letter's account of events.
The letter lists eight separate days when outages struck between April and August, and it warns that losing power during high summer temperatures puts residents' health and safety at risk, as reported by NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth. McCaskill's letter frames the outages as more than an inconvenience, arguing that repeated disruptions have created real risks for a community that depends on steady power for everything from home cooling to small business operations.
For Rupesh Neupane, who works at 33 Peaks Cafe, the outages have already taken a financial toll. He said the repeated power loss has derailed service at the cafe more than once, and that customers who want to spend money simply cannot be served when the espresso machine goes dark. Neupane said the cafe needs power just to run its espresso machine and make coffee, a basic requirement that outages have repeatedly interrupted.
Traffic Signals and Community Centers Went Dark Too
The outages have not been limited to homes and cafes. Earlier this month, disruptions temporarily knocked out power to The Marq community center and Champions Club while turning major traffic signals along State Highway 114 into four-way stops, according to Mayor McCaskill. City officials publicly urged drivers to use caution at darkened intersections while crews worked to restore service.
Utility officials identified tree branches making contact with overhead distribution lines as the direct cause of the repeated disruptions in the Southlake and Keller service areas last Tuesday and Wednesday, McCaskill said. That explanation lines up with vegetation contact being a common cause of overhead wire trips during hot summer months, though it does not address why the outages recurred across multiple dates through the summer.
A Co-op Serving a Suburb That Outgrew Its Rural Roots
Tri-County Electric Cooperative was originally chartered in March 1939 to bring power to rural farms in North Texas, energizing its first lines that December for 112 rural households, per the Texas State Historical Association. Nearly nine decades later, the member-owned cooperative headquartered in Azle now maintains more than 9,660 miles of distribution lines and serves over 105,000 members and more than 136,800 meters across 16 North Texas counties, including fast-growing suburbs like Southlake, Keller, and Westlake.
Electric service across Southlake is actually split between two providers, Tri-County Electric Cooperative and Oncor Electric Delivery Company, depending on the specific neighborhood or street, according to the City of Southlake. That patchwork explains why some residents and businesses stayed lit while others nearby lost power entirely during the same outage events.
School District Joins Complaint as Outages Threaten Classrooms
Carroll Independent School District, which operates 11 campuses serving more than 8,400 students across a 21-square-mile district covering Southlake and parts of Grapevine, Colleyville, and Westlake, joined the mayor's office in raising concerns about persistent power outages. The district's involvement underscores how the outages have reached beyond homes and storefronts to touch one of the region's largest suburban school systems.
In response to the outages, Tri-County Electric Cooperative has committed substantial additional resources to the Southlake area, including accelerated tree trimming, vegetation clearing, and system inspections. The cooperative has acknowledged that the recent level of power outages experienced by Southlake members is unacceptable and says it will finalize reliability improvements for the area in the coming weeks, while stating that no other complaints have been filed against it this year.
What Happens Next With the State Complaint
The Public Utility Commission of Texas told NBC 5 it had not yet received the complaint as of the station's reporting. The commission's Consumer Protection Division typically handles issues involving utility providers and generally has 15 days to investigate complaints once they are filed.
Complicating matters, state law treats electric cooperatives differently than investor-owned utilities like Oncor. While the PUCT investigates customer service complaints and reliability issues generally, electric cooperatives in Texas are governed by elected member boards and are exempt from state retail rate regulation under the Public Utility Regulatory Act, according to the Office of the Attorney General of Texas. That means much of the ultimate decision-making on system upgrades and service policy rests with Tri-County's own board rather than with state regulators.
Texas administrative rules also generally require complainants to attempt informal resolution before pursuing a formal proceeding before the commission, unless a good cause exception is granted. For a city government and school district pressing for faster infrastructure fixes, that procedural step adds another layer between the complaint and any binding outcome.
Southlake's high concentration of remote professionals and corporate facilities, in a city with a median household income of roughly $250,001, means grid reliability carries outsized economic weight for a community built around retail centers like Southlake Town Square. For now, business owners like Neupane are left waiting to see whether the cooperative's promised upgrades arrive before the next outage does.
