CPS Energy's Winter Preparedness
We believe in year-round Reliability! We want our community to know what we did to prepare for extreme weather. We made improvements in three key areas: weatherization, infrastructure, and communications.
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1. Weatherization
- We took freeze protection actions at power plants, including adding heaters, temporary enclosures and insulation.
- We completed enhanced insulation installation on power lines and devices, along with upgrades on selected systems.
- We invested more than $20M to enhance weatherization upgrades since 2011. We invested about $2M - $3M during 2022. We anticipate spending of up to $46M during the next two to three years.
2. Infrastructure
- ERCOT has made improvements that complement our efforts in our service area.
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- We reviewed and revised our list of uninterruptable circuits, including circuits that service key utility facilities.
- If the San Antonio service area experiences another major load shed event, we expect to meet our goal to turn a customers’ power off for only 15 minutes at a time.
- 155 of our circuits are now considered interruptible, meaning we have more areas where power can be cut if outages are required.
- We have taken actions to improve the experience for all customers without jeopardizing critical facilities needed for emergency response.
- We partner with SAWS under a Resiliency Initiative to address circuit redundancy and strategies for onsite generation as a means of greater resiliency for the most critical facilities.
3. Communications
- We improved internal processes for communicating with customers, ensuring that important details are conveyed.
- We streamlined communication between CPS Energy and SAWS Operations Teams for greater responsiveness to the needs of both utilities.
- We communicate frequently with City of San Antonio, Bexar County Office fo Emergency Management, elected officials and stakeholders.
- We will continue status updates at the Municipal Utilities Committee (MUC) meetings & to our Board of Trustees.