CPS to credit bills for storm outages
CPS Energy is giving many of its customers a break — a one-time billing credit this month to those who lost power for a total of 24 hours or more during February’s winter storm.
But the savings won’t come close to matching the misery they experienced.
CPS is reducing customers’ bills based on how much time they went without lights, heat or the ability to cook food. Depending on the length of their outages, customers’ bills could be reduced by between $8 to more than $100.
“They’re still not going to be happy they went through the experience,” said Rudy Garza, CPS’S chief customer engagement officer. “Our approach here is to try to do something for our customers in recognition that it was a really tough week.”
The bill credits will cost CPS $3.5 million.
That’s on top of the roughly $1 billion in charges for power and natural gas CPS bought
during the storm. The cityowned utility has sued 15 of its gas suppliers in Bexar County District Court, accusing them of price-gouging.
At least two suppliers — Houston-based Conocophillips and Houston Pipe Line Co. — have gone to court to force CPS to pay the bills it racked up the week of Feb. 14.
As the utility struggles with its storm-related expenses, customers’ pastdue bills continue to pile up, exceeding $93 million as of Jan. 31. CPS plans to resume disconnections in late spring or early summer after a year-long hiatus driven by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“There’s a lot of financial issues that are compounding right now,” Garza said. “We tried to be thoughtful to offer something meaningful that we also thought we could afford.”
Despite its efforts to reduce the expenses it incurred in February — as well as collect on past-due accounts — CPS is likely to seek a rate hike in the near future because of the financial shock.
Some households and businesses bore more of the brunt of the blackouts — ordered by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the state grid operator — than others.
More than 250,000 CPS customers were without power for at least 24 hours throughout during the deep freeze. Another roughly 25,000 ratepayers lost electricity for more than 48 hours that week, according to CPS.
Nearly 80 customers had no power for more than four days.
The utility distributes power through a network of several hundred circuits throughout its service area. Several thousand households and businesses can sit in any one circuit area.
Throughout San Antonio, about two-thirds of those circuits are considered “uninterruptible,” meaning CPS has to keep power flowing to them even when ERCOT orders the utility to conduct “rolling blackouts.”
Customers who live near a hospital, military installation or police or fire station likely experienced less time without power than someone who lives further from these socalled critical infrastructure sites.
For customers who experienced power outages for a total of at least 24 hours during the storm, CPS will refund the “service availability charge” on their April bills, or about $8.75 for a residential or small business customer. Larger businesses will have $10.50 knocked off their bill.
Customers who lost power for more than 48 hours will receive that refund as well as an additional billing credit between $50 to $100, depending on how much time their power was out.
About 23,000 customers went without electricity for between two and three days, according to CPS. Those customers’ bills will be cut by $50 this month.
The nearly 1,400 customers who had no power for between three and four days will receive a $75 credit. Those who had no power for four days or more will get $100 towards their bill.
Utility officials have said outages that lasted multiple days were caused mostly by equipment problems, such as downed power lines or a blown fuse in a transformer. “When we were in the heat of the controlled outages, you can’t see those equipment failures to deal with them,” Garza said. “As soon as we could see them, we went and dealt with them.”
CPS said customers automatically will receive the credits, which the utility will apply to bills on April 10.
“While we understand that no amount of money can make up for that experience, we are passionate about following through on the commitment we made during the storm to further help our customers who were most affected by the related outages,” CPS chief executive Paula Gold-williams said in a statement.