COLLIN COUNTY , Oncor is pushing a multi-year package of electric reliability upgrades across fast-growing Collin County, with construction in and around Princeton that the utility said would begin the week of Aug. 24, 2026, plus related work in McKinney, Celina, and other communities named on its Collin County service improvements page.
The utility frames the work as outage-risk reduction and capacity for growth: new overhead and underground lines, pole replacements, vegetation management, and equipment upgrades under Oncor’s System Resiliency Plan, which Oncor says invests about $3 billion in distribution resiliency over several years. For North Texas homeowners already tracking school tax elections and data-center land fights, the grid story is the other half of the civic finance map: who pays for the wires when load and rooftops keep rising.
What Oncor’s Collin County page documents
Oncor’s public Collin County Service Improvements page lists communities that benefit from the enhancements, including Celina, Culleoka, Farmersville, McKinney, Melissa, and Princeton. Specific project notes include:
- Princeton: construction beginning the week of Aug. 24, 2026, with about six miles of new overhead distribution lines, about two miles of new underground electric infrastructure, and pole and equipment replacements. Customers may see crews, temporary road or lane closures, and planned outages with advance notice.
- McKinney: pole inspections, vegetation management, and pole/equipment replacements as a multi-phase resiliency effort expected to continue in phases through January 2027, weather permitting. Oncor ties this work to the System Resiliency Plan.
- Celina: inspections completed in October 2025, with a reliability improvement project that Oncor said began in February 2026; majority completion targeted for summer 2026, weather permitting, with more growth-related work expected in partnership with the city.
Those details are Oncor’s own project descriptions. Never Late News is not claiming a specific residential rate rider dollar amount from this page alone.
Why this lands in the North Texas civic finance cluster
Collin County’s growth is the same pressure showing up in school budgets and zoning fights. Prosper, Denton, Grand Prairie, and Fort Worth have all seen data-center or large-load politics this year in Never Late News’s cluster coverage. State leaders have also pushed utilities and ERCOT to keep large-load infrastructure costs from landing on residential bills. Oncor’s Collin County work is not a data-center permit. It is the distribution buildout that has to keep pace whether the next big load is a neighborhood, a warehouse, or a compute campus.
Related Never Late News coverage includes Denton’s data-center moratorium hearings, Fort Worth tabling the Edged data-center tax break, and Grand Prairie’s Amazon data-center tax notice.
What residents should expect on the ground
Oncor warns that temporary road closures and planned outages may be needed so crews can work safely, and that sensitive protective devices can cause unplanned outages if they detect a risk during energized work. The utility asks drivers to slow down near work zones and points outage reporting to Oncor.com, the MyOncor app, texting OUT to 66267, or 888-313-4747.
For Princeton and McKinney neighborhoods on narrow streets, the closure language is practical, not ceremonial. For Celina, the page’s growth partnership line matters as the city adds rooftops that later show up on school rolls and tax calendars.
What’s next
Watch Oncor’s updates for phase completion in Celina through late summer 2026 and McKinney work through January 2027, and watch whether Collin County cities publish complementary capital or franchise discussions as load forecasts rise. School boards set tax rates. Cities zone land. The utility builds the feeders. All three show up on the same household budget.
How Never Late News reported this
Never Late News based this report on Oncor’s official Collin County Service Improvements page, including the community list (Celina, Culleoka, Farmersville, McKinney, Melissa, Princeton), Princeton construction beginning the week of Aug. 24, 2026, approximately six miles of new overhead and two miles of underground infrastructure, McKinney work phased through January 2027, Celina’s October 2025 inspections and February 2026 project start with summer 2026 majority completion target, and the approximately $3 billion System Resiliency Plan reference. Primary source: oncor.com … collin-county-service-improvements. We did not invent rate impacts, interviews, or project mileages beyond that page.
Corrections and reader feedback
If you spot an error in project dates, mileages, or community names, email editor@neverlatenews.com with the correction and a source link. Never Late News corrects factual mistakes promptly when Oncor updates the Collin County project page.
About Never Late News: Never Late News is a US local and civic news site covering budgets, taxes, schools, housing, and public services with people-first reporting. This article carries the byline William J. Vaughn.