SAN ANTONIO – Four years later, even the memory of the February 2021 freeze can be chilly.
Rotating and lopsided power outages plagued the city and caused problems with the city’s water system. Statewide, more than 200 people died.
As the temperature starts to drop again, San Antonio’s two city-owned utilities say they’re ready for winter. Executives with CPS Energy and San Antonio Water System (SAWS) appeared before the city council’s Municipal Utilities Committee Monday afternoon to discuss their preparations.
Asked by Councilman Marc Whyte (D10) about how each utility would fare if the freeze happened again, CPS Energy CEO Rudy Garza said “the experience will be better” and SAWS Chief Operating Officer Andrea Breymer said “I think we’re in better shape than we were in ’21."
Chief Energy Supply Officer Benny Ethridge Jr. said the utility does not have any maintenance planned for January or February that would take its plants offline and that it has spent a lot of money and effort making its units more rugged.
“We’ve also fortified our gas system. We’ve added additional storage, and the gas suppliers have also stepped up their programs,” Ethridge said. “So we’ve got a much more robust system that we had we experienced Uri the first time.”
CPS officials say they’re also better equipped to handle rotating outages if they become necessary again. SAWS CEO Robert Puente made sure to highlight that the rolling outages four years ago were the work of the statewide grid’s operator, ERCOT.
“Uri and its aftermath would not have happened but for ERCOT and what they did to this community,” Puente told the committee. “CPS is 99.99% reliable, and they’re a very good utility. When they didn’t have the power to give to us, that’s what caused our shutdown."
A report on the freeze by an ad hoc committee found that some of SAWS' outages were a surprise to the utility. However, it also agreed to rotate outages at some of its pumping stations to help with CPS Energy’s attempts at load shedding.
However, Puente tells KSAT that “now they know which ones are critical that are not to be shut down.”
The two utilities also have a more than $300 million plan to put backup generators around the SAWS system. Though it is already underway, it’s not expected to be completed until 2030.