CPS ENERGY COMMENTS ON REPORT FROM SAN ANTONIO COMMITTEE ON EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS
June 24, 2021– CPS Energy has released the following comments regarding the report from the City of San Antonio’s Committee on Emergency Preparedness, which is available here. CPS Energy expects to share additional updates on its progress on key emergency preparedness initiatives as the utility continues to receive feedback and work to make improvements in serving its customers.
Dr. Willis Mackey, Chair, Board of Trustees
“The Board of Trustees of CPS Energy would like to thank Chair Reed Williams and the members of the Committee on Emergency Preparedness. As Board Chair and Board members, we are aware of the challenges we faced during this historic winter storm. We are committed to addressing these challenges and you have our assurances that CPS Energy will do everything we can to continue to deliver the service our community deserves.”
Janie Gonzalez, Vice Chair, Board of Trustees
“I thank the Committee on Emergency Preparedness for its time and effort in comprehensively assessing what happened before, during, and after the winter storm. In addition to being the Vice Chair of the Board, I am also the Chair of our Technology & Resiliency Board Committee. Our Committee will also be looking at ways to improve our work. Please be assured that I will be working with our Chair, the rest of the Board, and management to help ensure the Committee’s recommendations are effectively and efficiently implemented.”
Paula Gold-Williams, President & Chief Executive Officer
“I want to thank the Committee on Emergency Preparedness for the incredibly important work they are doing to ensure San Antonio is prepared and resilient for extreme events. This extreme weather event was unprecedented, especially in how it severely affected citizens across Greater San Antonio. In fact, millions of residents across Texas experienced unusually long outages during that historic week in February and now we are all dealing with the aftermath of ERCOT’s market design failures and the price gouging from a number of natural gas suppliers.”
“CPS Energy’s first priority is providing safe, reliable, affordable, resilient energy to our community. Winter Storm Uri laid bare a number of issues across our state’s energy system that can make that challenging during extreme events. From ERCOT’s leadership and decision-making errors, to $16 billion of erroneous pricing, to natural gas suppliers’ efforts to price gouge and charge egregious rates, to CPS Energy’s need to improve our communication, generation reliability and ability to protect the grid, it is clear that there is work to be done. Rest assured we are eager to, and will, deliver for our community.”
Fred Bonewell, Chief Operating Officer
“The Committee’s findings are valuable as CPS Energy continues our efforts to implement learnings from the storm and prepare for extreme events while navigating the growing energy demands of our booming city. We have learned a lot from Winter Storm Uri and its aftermath, and I am confident that we have an excellent plan in place to get the job done.”
“CPS Energy was the first utility in Texas to come back online after the storm thanks to our excellent team’s hard work. We are bringing that same tenacity to addressing our areas for growth, and have already begun the process of investing in grid improvements; improving incident communication; and adequately winterizing our facilities for summer and winter. Together these steps will help us move CPS Energy forward and continue achieving our mission to provide safe, reliable, affordable and resilient energy now and into the future.”
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