SAN ANTONIO – Officials with the City of San Antonio, CPS Energy, SAWS and VIA held a briefing Monday about coordinated efforts to keep people safe and keep city services up during the extreme heat.
Monday is expected to be the hottest day of the year so far with a high temperature of around 107 degrees.
WATCH: How one business is helping others stay cool
City of San Antonio
City Manager Erik Walsh said the city’s cooling centers will be open until 10 p.m. on Monday.
City workers are reaching out to people in the homeless community, delivering water to them and offering transportation to cooling centers.
City buildings and facilities are reducing non-essential processes, turning off lights and setting temperatures in city buildings to 78 or higher Monday afternoon to reduce the load on the electrical grid.
CPS Energy
Rudy Garza, the interim president of CPS Energy said they anticipate having the energy needed to serve CPS Energy customers and are actually sending some energy back to ERCOT.
Officials with ERCOT — the entity that manages the state’s electric power — have said they don’t expect any system-wide outages like during the winter storm of 2021, but have asked customers to conserve.
“On extremely hot days, there’s always a chance,” Garza said.
Garza said ERCOT has hit six new peaks for usage so far this summer and CPS Energy has set one new peak record and said even little efforts can make a difference on these extreme demand days.
“Every kilowatt hour counts,” Garza said.
He urged customers during the peak hours of 2-8 p.m. to set their AC to 78 degrees or higher, turn off lights and avoid doing laundry or using other large appliances. He urged pool owners to turn off their pumps and owners of electric cars to avoid charging them Monday afternoon.
Garza said if rolling blackouts did become necessary, they would only be for 15 minutes and would be more equitable than in the winter of 2021 due to improvements within their system.
If customers are not already receiving texts or other communications from CPS Energy, he urged them to call customer service at 210-353-2222 and update their contact information.
SAWS
While Monday’s extreme temperatures are not expected to affect water service for San Antonio Water System customers, SAWS officials said they’re doing their part to be less of a drain on the energy supply.
- SAWS will stop pumping recycled water into the San Antonio River at 1 p.m.
- All SAWS office facilities will run on generator power starting at 2:30 p.m.
- Water pumping at our desalination plant and Aquifer Storage and Recovery (ASR) at H2Oaks Center will be turned off but will not affect water availability for customers.
VIA Metropolitan Transit
VIA Metropolitan Transit is providing free bus service to any of the city’s cooling stations. VIA workers will also be driving around and providing water to people waiting at bus stops, Tremell Brown, the Vice President of safety, training and system security for VIA said during Monday’s briefing.
Watch the city’s news conference below
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