Owned since 2020 by the Infrastructure Investments Fund (IIF), a private investment vehicle advised by J.P. Morgan Investment Management.
Regional utility — this same portal appears in el-paso-tx and las-cruces-nm.
Estimates only — increases land differently by rate class and usage; the sourced numbers are in “On the record” below.
El Paso Electric is the region's defining example of a private-equity–owned utility: a monopoly with no competitor, bought off the public stock market in 2020 by the Infrastructure Investments Fund, a private vehicle advised by J.P. Morgan's asset-management arm. When it was publicly traded, anyone could read its quarterly filings; now the clearest public look inside the company comes when it asks regulators for more money.
Since the sale, it has been asking. In January 2025 EPE filed for its largest Texas increase in memory — about 23% for residential customers — and regulators approved a trimmed 13.95% version in February 2026. A month later it filed for a $70.4 million increase in New Mexico. The company says roughly $2.4 billion in grid investment since its last rate review justifies the new rates.
At the same time, the utility is signing up enormous new industrial customers: Meta's data center in far east El Paso has grown into a $10 billion project that will be the biggest power user on the system, fed at first by a dedicated gas plant. The open question for every household on this page: who ends up paying for the grid that growth requires — the data centers, or you.
IIF's purchase of El Paso Electric closed at $68.25 a share after approvals from the PUCT, the NMPRC, the city of El Paso, and FERC — which dismissed concerns about the fund's JPMorgan link but ordered a market-power mitigation plan. Settlement terms included a 10-year ownership commitment and keeping headquarters in El Paso.
EPE's Texas rate case opened with a request that would have added about $22.39 a month to an average residential bill. The city of El Paso and area employers fought it through hearings, and in December 2025 the administrative law judges' proposed decision cut roughly $60 million from the requested base-rate revenue and trimmed the utility's allowed profit.
Texas regulators approved a smaller increase than requested: average residential bills rise from about $98 to about $111, and the flat monthly customer charge — paid regardless of usage — jumps from $9.25 to $13.71. The city of El Paso filed for rehearing in March; new fees and solar charges rolled onto bills in the spring.
EPE asked the NMPRC to raise New Mexico base rates in two phases of roughly 50 cents a day each — about $1 a day total for a typical household — citing $2.4 billion in system investment, $408 million of it in New Mexico. A public comment hearing was held June 22 at the Doña Ana County Government Center; the evidentiary hearing runs September 21 – October 2, 2026, with a decision expected by year's end.
Meta's far-east El Paso data center grew from a $1.5 billion groundbreaking to a $10 billion-plus project — the largest power user on EPE's system once built, initially served by the dedicated McCloud gas plant with Meta covering costs for the first five years. EPE's whole system peaked at about 2.3 gigawatts in 2023; reporting has pressed the question of what more data centers mean for everyone else's bills and water.
Utility Watch is built on the same platform as this market’s archived public meetings — search the record for every time “El Paso Electric” came up in council chambers.
🔎 Search the meeting archive for “El Paso Electric”