Between May 2025 and August 2026, private capital closed on New Mexico's biggest gas utility, moved on its biggest electric utility, and got caught breaking the law on the way in — while all three of the state's electric companies pushed rate increases at once. This is the whole board, from the federal data up.
Prices are what an average home actually paid per kWh in 2025, from federal filings — credits, fuel and riders included. Co-ops (Kit Carson, the rural co-ops) serve much of the rest of the state and are member-owned — a different story, not this one.
Headlines from the region's newsrooms, matched to this beat — headline and link only; the click goes to the newsroom that did the work.
Same all-in measure for all three: total residential dollars billed ÷ kilowatt-hours sold. The surprise: since 2019 the un-bought utility rose fastest, and the fund-owned one fell — because regulators ordered refunds. Ownership sets the stakes; enforcement sets the price.
Average residential price, read the way the grid bills you — the dials alternate direction like the real instrument, and the register carries the exact digits. Disk speed is editorial: it tracks each line's climb since 2019, not live load. From the module's Instrument Shop.
Round one — Avangrid. In 2020, Spanish-owned Avangrid offered $8.3 billion for PNM. Every sister regulator approved. New Mexico's five elected commissioners voted it down 5–0 in December 2021, unconvinced the benefits reached customers. Avangrid waited out an appeal and walked away in January 2024. New Mexico became the state that killed a utility mega-deal.
The rules changed. Voters had already approved swapping the elected commission for three governor-appointed experts, effective January 2023. So the commission that judges Blackstone is not the one that judged Avangrid — smaller, appointed, and untested on a deal this size. Watchdogs wondered which way "professionalized" would cut.
Round two — Blackstone answered the question early. Its $11.5B agreement came with something regulators had never blessed: a $400 million purchase of TXNM stock at signing, before any approval — the same buy-in-first pattern it used at Indiana's NIPSCO.
July 2, 2026: the stock buy is ruled illegal — voided, unwound at shareholder expense, penalties on top.
Hearing examiners cited "deliberate disregard" of the approval requirement. TXNM borrowed $400M from Wells Fargo and repaid Blackstone within weeks; the share transfer was canceled; a compliance report landed at the end of July. Reporting later flagged that Blackstone kept millions in dividends earned while it held the voided shares — one of the loose threads the review can still pull.
The merger clock reset too: the agreement now runs to May 31, 2027, with the NMPRC (and the NRC, for PNM's Palo Verde share) still to rule. September's compliance check is the gate that reopens the case.
Three weeks after the void order, the same commission approved the New Mexico Gas sale 2–1 — with a rate freeze and credits attached. Read together: not a wall against private capital, but a price list for entry. Whether the price is high enough is the fight.
While the ownership fights run, the rate calendar is the busiest it has been in years — all in front of the same three commissioners:
Project Jupiter — the OpenAI/Oracle "Stargate" campus in Santa Teresa — carries a $165 billion industrial revenue bond, the largest in state history, and will draw 2.45 gigawatts from its own fuel-cell microgrid, deliberately isolated from the regional grid. For scale: that's more than the record demand of the entire El Paso–Las Cruces system (2.38 GW).
The grid-connected wave is at the door too: Meta's gigawatt campus sits on EPE's system just across the state line (self-funded for five years, per File No. 1); EPE's new data-center tariff anticipates 1–2 GW more; SPS cites load growth in its case; and load growth is precisely why funds want these utilities (File No. 2). The George Mason study written for Minnesota's consumer board named the central risk for exactly this moment: whether the costs of serving giant new customers stay on those customers. New Mexico's dockets are where that gets decided next.
Electric: +$15/mo Jan 2027, +$27/mo more Oct 2027 (if approved) · Gas: frozen to 2028
Your electric utility has been fund-owned since 2020; its refund-era prices are the lowest in the state and its pending ask is the largest. Your gas utility was just bought by private equity — with the freeze as the entry fee. Both outcomes now rest with the same three appointed commissioners in Santa Fe.
The levers that exist: the EPE case's public-comment window (the June hearing mattered — commissioners heard it), and the September Blackstone compliance review, which sets the tone for every deal after it.
It killed Avangrid, voided Blackstone's stock buy, and priced a rate freeze into the gas sale. No state has pushed back harder — and no state has more of its grid in play at once.
Since 2019: the un-bought utility (SPS) +33%, PNM +23%, the fund-owned one (EPE) −1% under refund orders. Ownership didn't set those prices — commission decisions did, case by case. That cuts both ways: weak enforcement, not ownership papers, is what would raise them.
The gas deal's freeze-and-credits package is the template on the table when the Blackstone case resumes. What the PRC extracts there — and whether it holds costs of AI-era growth on the growth — decides what the next decade of bills looks like.
Sept 2026: Blackstone compliance gate. Q4 2026: SPS decision. Late 2026: EPE-NM decision. 2027: Blackstone ruling (agreement runs to May 31), EPE phases hit January and October. Early 2028: the gas freeze lifts. Every one is a page-update on this file.
How we measured. Each series is total residential revenue ÷ residential kilowatt-hours sold from EIA Form 861 (2025 = early release) for the New Mexico rows of PNM (utility 15473), El Paso Electric (5701) and Southwestern Public Service (17718) — the same all-in measure as Files 1 and 2, credits and fuel included. The U.S. line computed this way matches EIA's published averages within 0.04¢ in every overlapping year. Changes compare 2019 (last pre-pandemic, pre-buyout-era year) to 2025. Trajectory is evidence, not verdict: fuel, storms, mandates and inflation all move these lines.
EIA Form 861 annual files, 1990–2025ER (utilities 15473, 5701, 17718) · EIA state averages (validation)
Utility Dive: 5–0 rejection, Dec 2021 · The Paper: Avangrid walks, Jan 2024 · Ballotpedia: 2020 Amendment 1 · The three appointees, Jan 2023
The $11.5B agreement, May 2025 · Source NM: the void order, Jul 2, 2026 · ABQ Journal: unwind ordered · Report: dividends kept on voided shares · Merger extended to May 31, 2027 · Santa Fe New Mexican: calls for more scrutiny · NMPRC case page
PNM: $105M approved, 9.45% ROE, phased Jul 2025 / Apr 2026 · SPS: $90M settlement, decision Q4 2026 · SPS's original $168M ask · EPE-NM: the $70.4M / ~50% ask · KRWG: the Las Cruces hearing · The 2023 refund order
The $1.25B sale, Aug 2024 · Source NM: approved 2–1, Jul 30, 2026 (freeze + credits) · Closing, Aug 12, 2026
Jupiter joins Stargate ($165B IRB) · Jupiter's 2.45 GW fuel-cell microgrid · EPE's 1–2 GW data-center forecast · GMU study: large-load cost allocation is the central risk
File No. 3 in the Grid & Capital series · File No. 1: The El Paso Electric Ledger · File No. 2: The Grid Buyout Ledger