Statements

UPDATE ON PLANNED OUTAGES TO PREPARE FOR WINTER WEATHER – 8 ADDITIONAL UNITS COMPLETE PLANNED OUTAGE AS OF 12/10/21

Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT)’s new winter readiness efforts required operators across the state to certify compliance of winter weather readiness for generation units and transmission systems by December 1, 2021. In our formal response to ERCOT on November 30, 2021, CPS Energy reported all transmission systems and 12 generation units (11 thermal units and 1 battery storage site) as fully compliant.

This week, we formally notified ERCOT that 8 additional generating units have returned from planned outages and are now compliant with winter readiness compliance, resulting in a total of 20 units that are now fully compliant with ERCOT’s Winter Weather Readiness Report (WWRR). 

As part of our ongoing reliability and resiliency efforts, CPS Energy modified power plant outage schedules to ensure there are no planned outages in January or February or during the summer peak months. Three units remain in an outage as required maintenance work is completed to support reliable operations.  As these units return to service, we will formally notify ERCOT and continue to share updates with our community. Two remaining units, Braunig 1 and Spruce 1, are scheduled to complete their planned outages and be certified compliant by the end of the year, and Braunig -VHB6T8 will remain in a forced outage until early January 2022 to address items discovered during a planned inspection in mid-October 2021.

The certification of compliance is a separate effort from weatherization of our generation units. Weatherization initiatives to protect the plants, pipes and other critical equipment from freezing weather are complete. More than 100 temporary structures have been built to protect critical equipment and other protective measures have been completed such as the placement of additional heaters, protective barriers and new measures totaling $2 million since February 2021. This work builds on nearly $20 million in weatherization improvements performed since the 2011 extreme winter weather event. 

###

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *