Frustrated CPS Energy Customers Criticize Utilities Coping With Winter Energy Crisis

San Antonio – Dozens of enraged CPS Energy customers gave the utility’s leadership a piece of their mind at the first CPS Board of Trustees meeting since last week’s controlled outage.

At the peak of the utility company’s controlled outage strategy, there were approximately 372,000 customers without power. Trustees heard the stories behind the statistics during nearly two and a half hours of public comment on Monday afternoon.

Although 108 people pre-registered to speak, not all did, as they were called one by one during the conference call.

Those who did speak told the board of their struggles with tainted food, talked outside to warm up from the cold of an unheated house, and were forced to store precious insulin in the snow. Among other complaints, they also criticized the utility’s forced power outage that left some people without power for several days.

“The trust is gone, and saying ‘I’m sorry’ is empty,” said one caller. “People first is not something you should say longer.”

Many oppose the idea that customers would also bear the cost of the event – even if it was in the long run. Some suggested forgoing storm period bills.

The amount that CPS pays for fuel is typically entered into the customer’s accounts over a period of 45 to 60 days. However, given the boom in natural gas prices – a whopping 16,000% – CEO Paula Gold-Williams said CPS is considering extending the cost in 10 years or more rather than dropping the cost into one bill.

However, CPS is still figuring out how much more it spent over the winter event and what it could do to reduce that amount before passing the cost on to taxpayers.

I fully understand that customers will not want to pay anything related to the storm, ”Gold-Williams said at the meeting. “We’re going to do our best to lower those prices, to work with state and local officials so that we can search for all possible resources.”

Some speakers said that CPS should be placed under the control of the city council rather than appointed trustees – an issue raised in the failed “Recall CPS” petition. According to the San Antonio report, the petition did not get enough signatures to get into the May 1 vote, and the utility took to court in an attempt to cut its legs out from under it.

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