Company powers through the freeze, COVID
Despite a recordshattering freeze that spiraled into power plant outages, continued upheaval related to COVID-19 and uncertainty due to a pending overhaul of Texas' wholesale power market, merchant power company Calpine managed to keep growing in 2021.
The 2,100-employee company raked in more than $9.6 billion in revenues in 2021, up from
$8.8 billion a year prior.
Hether Benjamin Brown, chief administrative officer for Calpine, said none of that success would be possible without the company's employees, especially those who operate Calpine's 76 power plants nationwide.
“Our plant employees never got to work from home, and quite frankly, we used those employees as first responders in every sense of the word,” Brown said.
The company's revenues dipped in 2020 after COVID-19 shut workplaces and led to a sag in electricity demand, sliding from $10.1 billion in 2019. Electricity demand nearly returned to prepandemic levels last year nationwide, according to the Energy Information Administration, buoyed mostly by commercial and industrial consumers.
But in Texas, power generation of all types were knocked offline in February 2021 as recordlow temperatures swept across the state. Brown said the freeze shut down some of their plants as well, mostly due to interrupted natural gas supplies.
Still, she said, power plant operators “worked around the clock in very challenging conditions to keep our plants operating and running.”
That level of dedication led the company to award all power plant workers with the company's ASPIRE award, which is given to those who performed above and beyond what their jobs typically entail and includes a bonus. Calpine also adjusted its paid-time-off policies to prevent workers from getting burnt out after the February storm.
Still, challenges spurred by the freeze remain. Power generators still do not know how the wholesale power market will look, or how generators will be compensated, once the Public Utility Commission of Texas finishes overhauling the state's deregulated power market later this year.
Brown said the company is focused on remaining competitive, no matter how the market is redesigned.
“One of our core values is to support competitive markets,” she said, “and we continue to believe nondiscriminatory, competitive markets will deliver the most reliable and cost-effective solutions for all customers.”