CEO: New year brings defined focus on CPS Energy's "Vision 2027" goals

February is the beginning of CPS Energy ’s new fiscal year. The previous year and the beginning of this year have brought key decisions and actions. There were historic decisions from our Board of Trustees and our teams worked around the clock as needed to meet severe weather fearlessly and keep our customers informed about the restoration progress.

The new year brings us a defined focus on meeting our?Vision 2027?goals, which include Community Conversations and Key Results. On January 23, 2023, our Board of Trustees acted upon generation resource planning public input and voted to approve our generation plan to power the San Antonio community through 2030. This decision followed the collaborative design and approval in June of 2022 to extend and enhance our energy efficiency and conservation programs. Our next public input decision is around rate design. Your opinions matter and I encourage you to engage in our community conversations.

The power generation resource planning considered aging power plants, the future of coal-powered units, our role in San Antonio’s Climate Action and Adaptation Plan (CAAP), and the projected population growth expected for Greater San Antonio. We are planning for a future that will require more energy than ever - an additional 115 megawatts (MW) of new generating capacity every year. Our objectives include system reliability and climate resiliency, customer affordability, environmental sustainability, and other factors. The 21 members of our Rate Advisory Committee (RAC) began generation planning efforts in April 2022. The CPS Energy Board of Trustees approved?their recommendation?for a blended portfolio of gas, solar, wind, and storage.

We conducted our?Powering Our Community’s Future?initiative to inform and encourage customers to weigh in on the generation plan with their priorities. We hosted open houses, held a virtual town hall, and conducted a survey to understand the opinions of our community.?As a public utility owned by the community we serve, your input was a critical component of this process. Our Board listened, and the RAC’s recommendation and customers’ priorities shaped their decision. Our commitment to our community is that we continue to keep you informed and engaged on the next steps in how we bring this generation plan to life. This was a thorough process and one we will refine as the RAC’s next task focuses on rate design.

While we’ve made progress on our goals, ongoing supply chain issues are real challenges we must address. Labor and raw material shortages coupled with a growing demand for electricity across the country have contributed to the backlog for important equipment, such as transformers. Transformers are an essential piece of equipment required to deliver electricity to homes, impacting our ability to support new construction and outage restoration. We’ve been proactively meeting with and updating area home builders and developers whose projects are impacted. All electric utilities are experiencing these shortages on a global scale.

Despite challenges, our team’s focus on serving our community is stronger than ever, as demonstrated during the February 1 ice storm. At peak on early Wednesday morning, we had 45,000 customers experiencing an outage, and that number dropped steadily as our team worked safely to have all customers restored by Thursday night. After all our customers were restored, our crew members and our Customer Response Unit (CRU) made their way to Austin to help our neighbors in need. They were a welcome sight, and I know this is something our public power partners would do for us, as well.

?Staying Connected

For three years, we’ve navigated through some challenging times. We were called on to support the community through the impacts of the pandemic, and we answered that call. We suspended disconnects for?years. Now, it’s time to move forward and address the issue of long-standing overdue balances.

We are asking customers with outstanding bills to reach out to us, so we can help explore options, like payment plans. We have grants for those in our community in need and are working with organizations to ensure vulnerable community members receive help. We connected customers with $58 million in utility assistance and $20 million in American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) assistance in 2022. We even have Energy Angels - a program where someone can make a payment toward the energy bill of a friend, loved one, or neighbor.

At this point, we have to disconnect power, according to our collections process, for customers that have not reached out to us for help. If someone you know needs help paying their energy bill, please encourage them to contact us at 210-353-2222.

Board Service Milestones

?Dr. Willis Mackey has been reappointed?to the CPS Energy Board of Trustees. Dr. Mackey has been a dedicated and passionate customer advocate since his initial appointment five years ago. He’s supported our Sustainable Tomorrow Energy Plan (STEP), the CAAP, and served as Chair of the Board of Trustees.

Effective February 1, 2023,?Trustee Janie Martinez Gonzalez was elected as the new Board Chair, and Dr. Francine Sanders Romero was elected as the new Vice Chair, marking the first time a pair of women will lead the CPS Energy Board in these roles.

We know our Board of Trustees will continue to govern with an eye toward ensuring that as the nation’s largest municipally owned electric and natural gas utility, we never lose sight of serving our community.

We invite our community to join us on February 27, 2023, from 5:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. at our headquarters for a reception celebrating our new Board Chair and Vice Chair and to thank Dr. Mackey for his service as our previous Chair.

Here’s to a healthy and safe 2023.

- Rudy D. Garza , President & CEO

Click here to continue reading CPS Energy's full February 2023 ENGAGE Newsletter.