Texas TDU Activates Catastrophic Estimation Process For Meter Reads

AEP Texas Central is activating its meter reading Catastrophic Estimation Process (CEP) on Thursday, July 23, 2026 ahead of Tropical Storm Bertha

CEP is used by AEP Texas during outage events to prevent the use of estimated usage for premises during periods in which a premise's meter was without power.

If the meter maintains communications while CEP is active, the MDM will operate as normal and usage data will be sent to market as normal through the daily LSE files to ERCOT and Smart Meter Texas.

However, if the meter loses communications while CEP is active, MDM will populate Zero-Actual usage data for periods of non-communication within the daily LSE files that are sent to ERCOT and Smart Meter Texas.

• Once communication is restored, AEP Texas will initiate the Gap Fill Retrieval process and attempt to retrieve any available usage data stored at the meter for up to 5 days.

• If any Actual meter data is retrieved via Gap Fill Retrieval, recovered usage data will replace any previous CEP Zero-actual intervals and will be sent in a re-versioned LSE file to ERCOT and Smart Meter Texas.

Once an outage situation is resolved, AEP Texas will de-activate CEP and estimation processes will return to normal.