The line most often quoted from SB 1497 is eight words long: “A broker may not sell or take title to electric energy.”
It is quoted so often that people assume it is the whole statute. It is not even the most operationally consequential part. What SB 1497 built, through the rules that implement it, is a registration and conduct perimeter with dates attached — application deadlines, renewal cycles, amendment windows, complaint clocks, and record-production timelines. A broker who knows the title prohibition and none of the deadlines is compliant in principle and exposed in practice.
The sequence
The Senate committee analysis of the bill explained the problem it was addressing: “new entities are taking part in the market and providing brokerage services to retail customers.” A mature competitive market had grown an intermediation layer that contracted for customer data, advised on provider selection, and was not required to register anywhere.
SB 1497 took effect September 1, 2019, adding Utilities Code §39.3555. It defines compensated brokerage services as advice, procurement services, or acting for a retail customer regarding selection of a REP or a REP product or service. It covers online brokerage. It bars compensated unregistered activity. It directs the PUCT to implement customer protection, disclosure, and marketing provisions, and to process an application no later than the sixtieth day after filing.
The Commission adopted the implementing rules at its May 1, 2020 open meeting in Project No. 49794, describing the intent in the adopting order: “The adopted rules are intended to provide a straightforward registration process together with the customer protections that are appropriate for brokers.” 16 TAC §25.112, the registration rule, took effect May 24, 2020. 16 TAC §25.486, the customer-protection rule, has been effective in its current form since July 19, 2023.
The dates in §25.112
Registration first. The rule requires business names, principal-place contact information, Commission contact, customer service and complaint contacts, business form, and an officer or owner affidavit covering Texas authorization, accuracy, updates, and compliance. The application must be sworn and signed.
Then the clocks. Staff may identify deficiencies within 20 working days. An applicant has 10 working days to cure. Acceptance or rejection follows within 60 days after a complete application is received.
Then the maintenance cycle, which is where firms actually fail. A registration expires three years after its number is assigned or was most recently updated, unless updated. The update is due at least 90 days before expiration. Material registration changes must be amended within 30 calendar days.
Ninety days before a three-year expiration is a date nobody remembers without a calendar entry, and a lapsed registration is not a paperwork inconvenience — it is compensated brokerage activity without registration.
Two structural provisions deserve their own attention. The rule states: “A broker is responsible for all activities conducted on its behalf by any subcontractor or agent.” You cannot outsource the exposure. And a REP may rely on the PUCT’s public broker list in determining whether a broker is registered, while a REP must not knowingly provide bids or offers to a compensated unregistered broker. That second provision means a lapsed registration does not only create a regulatory problem. It closes the supply desk.
REPs cannot register as brokers. The roles are exclusive by statute.
The enforcement authority is real: the Commission may impose an administrative penalty and may suspend or revoke a registration for significant violations, including false information to the Commission, fraudulent, unfair, misleading, deceptive, or anti-competitive practices, a pattern of noncompliance, untimely responses to inquiries or customer complaints, unauthorized switching, or unauthorized billing.
The disclosures in §25.486
Before initiating brokerage services, before renewal, and before a material change in the services or their terms, a broker must disclose: registered name, contact information, PUCT registration number, any affiliate REP, a description of services, duration where applicable, how the broker will be compensated and by whom, the termination process and cost where applicable, and PUCT complaint contact information.
The compensation language in the rule: “A broker must inform a client” of “how the broker will be compensated for providing brokerage services and by whom.”
Note what is not required. The Commission declined to require disclosure of the amount received from a REP. Its reasoning in the adoption order was that knowledge that the REP compensates the broker alerts the client to a possible conflict while respecting proprietary practices, and that nothing prevents voluntary disclosure of full compensation detail. That is a policy choice about the required floor, not a finding that the amount is immaterial.
The rule does prohibit falsely stating or suggesting that brokerage services are provided without compensation. “This doesn’t cost you anything” is not available language.
Client-agent authority must be in writing, with added disclosures covering authority, duration, termination, fees, and the life cycle of data and account access. Evidence of that authority must be available to the client, PUCT staff, or the enrolling REP on request.
Proprietary client information — identifiable usage, account, contract, price, and billing data — may not be released or sold without written client authorization. The adoption order contains a boundary worth knowing: the Commission treated a person who submits a name and email through a broker website to evaluate services as a client for proprietary-information purposes. Lead capture creates obligations.
And the complaint clocks. A broker must give reasonable access, investigate, advise the complainant, explain PUCT informal resolution within 21 days, answer a PUCT-forwarded informal complaint within 21 days, retain closed-complaint records for two years, and provide required records to the PUCT within 15 calendar days of request. Residential and small commercial clients cannot be required by broker agreement to use third-party arbitration or mediation in place of their PUCT complaint right.
A note on which timeline applies: the PUCT’s general consumer complaint page describes a utility response timetable. For brokers, §25.486’s 21-day schedule is the specific rule, and the general page should not be substituted for it.
The strongest objection
The argument I hear most from working brokers is that this is a paper regime with no teeth. The registration form asks for names and contacts and a sworn affidavit — not customer segments, not expected compensation, not revenue, not a complaint history. The Commission said as much when it declined OPUC’s request for additional registration disclosures, reasoning they were not needed to evaluate an application and could be obtained during an investigation if necessary. Low barrier in, no published broker-specific enforcement record out. It reads like guidance with a fee.
That is a fair description of the registration form and an unfair inference about the conduct rules, and the distinction is where the risk lives.
The registration regime is deliberately low-friction. That is a documented agency choice, and the trade-off is visible: easy entry and directory transparency, at the cost of no regulator-published broker business census.
The conduct regime is not low-friction at all. It carries specific, dated duties and explicit penalty authority including suspension and revocation. What is genuinely absent is the published outcome data. The PUCT’s January 2025 biennial report records 217 investigations, 16 fines, and $5,017,945 in penalties, refunds, and donations for November 1, 2022 through October 31, 2024 — but those totals span electric, apartments, water, and telecommunications and do not isolate broker cases. No broker-specific enforcement denominator was located in the sources behind this piece.
What the record does offer is thin. The PUCT counted 1,287 active registered brokers as of November 2022, and neither that biennial report nor the 2025 edition breaks out a single broker complaint, investigation, or sanction. The Commission’s fiscal-year enforcement summary sorts its cases by sector — electric retail, wholesale, water, telecom, apartments — and the FY2022 edition’s list of 32 closed docketed cases has no broker or aggregator line at all. The one broker sanction found in the trade press is a lone revocation: staff petitioned to pull RES Nation, LLC’s registration in December 2021, and the Commission revoked it by default order in June 2022 (Docket 52992) after the broker never answered the Notice of Violation. The charges were procedural — unanswered informal complaints and an unreported Secretary of State termination — not sales conduct.. One published action across roughly 1,300 registrants, in a window when the agency was opening hundreds of investigations a cycle, is a number that tells you almost nothing.
That absence is not evidence that broker enforcement is rare, and it is certainly not evidence that the rules are unenforceable. It means the deterrent is not visible in aggregate statistics, so a firm calibrating its compliance investment to published enforcement frequency is calibrating to a number that has not been published. The rule text is the operative authority. It says what it says whether or not anyone has tallied the cases.
Operative rule versus proposed enhancement
One more distinction, because it comes up in industry conversation and gets confused.
In July 2025 the Texas Energy Association for Marketers filed comments urging the Commission to import aggregator-style application disclosures into broker registration, restrict confusing broker names, and require disclosure of felonies, fraud, and serious violations. Its argument: “Requiring more upfront information during the broker registration process will enable the Commission to more thoroughly review registration applications…”
TEPA is an industry trade association representing competitive energy marketers. That filing is advocacy, not a rule. Those propositions are recommendations and are not requirements in the operative §25.112 text. Treat stronger diligence as risk management if you want it — and there are good reasons to want it — but do not describe it to staff or clients as a 2026 legal mandate.
The registration count, and what it doesn’t mean
The PUCT reported 1,287 active brokers as of November 2022 and 1,526 active brokers as of September 1, 2024. That is an increase of 239 registrations between two published observation dates.
It is a count of registered entities. It is not brokered megawatt-hours, broker revenue, commissions, market share, customer outcomes, or headcount. No public Texas source establishes any of those. Anybody using the registration trend as evidence of industry growth, opportunity, or earnings is making a claim the source cannot carry.
Amerigy Energy is a PUCT-registered broker in Lufkin, registration #BR190721. We do not sell or take title to electric energy, and we disclose how we are compensated and by whom before we start.