CPS ENERGY

After securing its first rate increase in eight years earlier this week, the work is just beginning for CPS Energy.

"12 On Your Side" is KSAT's weekly consumer round-up dedicated to providing the information that can better your life, written by award-winning journalist and KSAT consumer reporter Marilyn Moritz.

The San Antonio City Council approved the first CPS Energy rate increase in eight years, and it’s just the beginning of the many more rate increases.

San Antonio City Council approved the first CPS Energy rate increase in eight years on Thursday, which will raise the average homeowner’s monthly bill by about $5.10.

As a proposed CPS Energy rate increase heads to the San Antonio City Council for a vote this week, some customers are saying not so fast. Many who left in the dark during last year’s winter storm are asking why utility leaders aren’t taking a pay cut instead.

CPS Energy Board of Trustees unanimously approved <a href="https://www.ksat.com/news/local/2021/12/11/5-things-to-know-about-the-cps-energy-rate-hike/" target="_blank">a 3.85% rate increase</a> Monday. They also approved a regulatory asset, or a fuel adjustment charge, which the utility says will recover $418 million in fuel costs from last February’s winter storm.

The Legacy is a 20-unit townhome project near Pearl at the corner of North St. Mary’s Street and East Euclid Avenue.

In less than a week, the San Antonio City Council will vote on the first CPS Energy rate increase in eight years, but it’s not clear yet if there are enough votes to pass it.

CPS Energy has sold the second of two buildings comprising its downtown headquarters, and the buyer plans to turn it into a hotel.

CPS energy wants to raise rates. They say it’s needed to better weatherize equipment, get new equipment, to cover debt from the winter storm and for staff.

CPS Energy was ranked 12th out of 12 utilities serving residential customers in the South-Large region according to the J.D. Power 2021 Electric Utility Residential Customer Satisfaction Study released this month.

While February’s deadly winter storm not only left hundreds of thousands of San Antonio residents without power in subfreezing temperatures, some for days on end, it also exposed a large number of organizational issues within CPS Energy, the largest public power company in the nation.

As CPS Energy pushes for city council approval of a new rate hike, the utility’s interim CEO doesn’t expect to win over many of its customers.

The rate hike has been expected for several months, and while it’s lower than the double-digit percentage increase the utility originally wanted, many customers still have questions. We have answers.

Through the new Alamo Regional Security Operations Center at Port San Antonio, city officials say they can collaborate closely with CPS Energy -- and possibly soon other local organizations -- to help each other better protect against cyberattacks.

CPS Energy used false data when submitting a diversity spending report and utility officials have recently been unable to rule out whether the miscalculations were done intentionally, a KSAT 12 Defenders investigation reveals.

The utility needs council’s support to institute a two-pronged approach to raising customers’ bills: a 3.85 percent increase to the base rates and a bump in the fuel adjustment charge. Combined, CPS officials say those changes would raise the average residential customer’s bill by about 3.3 percent - or $5.10 per month.

Ex-CPS Energy executive Fred Bonewell was a prolific spender of public money, expense reports and receipts obtained by KSAT 12 Defenders show.

CPS Energy will ask City Council on Wednesday to consider a 3.85% increase to the base rate - far below the 10% hike that former CEO Paula Gold-Williams had previously said the utility was considering.

As San Antonio’s city-owned utilities prepare for another winter, they’ve been taking steps to ensure the city isn’t left as vulnerable as it was during the February freeze.

San Antonio city's council on Thursday agreed to spend $30 million helping residents with their utility bills.

Some downtown CPS Energy customers are experiencing outages, affecting more than 300 in the area.

Saturday, Nov. 14, is Free Landfill Day for San Antonio residents.

CPS Energy has now spent over $7 million on outside attorneys and consultants to fight natural gas bills it racked up during February’s winter storm, records obtained by the KSAT 12 Defenders show.

Rudy D. Garza will serve as CPS Energy's interim president and CEO, according to the board of trustees.

Multiple underground explosions heard in downtown San Antonio overnight were caused by equipment failure, according to CPS Energy.

February’s storm caused major shortages to the natural gas supply chain, which caused prices to skyrocket by 10,000%. It’s why U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro of San Antonio introduced a <a href="https://castro.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/congressman-castro-introduces-bill-to-prevent-natural-gas-price-gouging-during-emergencies?peek=EJ1ecvpPve%2FjxsSj2BH7DggoEPThCyXCDcvafa0miGf%2FDw3L">bill</a> Wednesday that would prevent natural gas price gouging during a declared emergency.

The City of San Antonio is considering using a $30 million chunk of the federal money it received from the American Rescue Plan Act to help pay off or pay down the overdue utility bills of struggling San Antonio residents.

Council members’ concerns over the process for appointing trustees to the city’s water and utilities spurred lengthy discussions Thursday, but ultimately weren’t enough to derail the newest SAWS and CPS Energy board appointments.

CPS Energy President and CEO Paula Gold-Williams plans to leave the public utility in early 2022, according to a news release.

CPS Energy officials have dismissed at least three lawsuits against natural gas suppliers it accused of price gouging and charging exorbitant rates for fuel during February’s winter blast, court records obtained by the KSAT 12 Defenders show.

Fred Bonewell departs the embattled public utility just months after being promoted to its number two position.

The ethnically insensitive comment, made in front of four fellow employees, led to a complaint being filed against Bonewell with the utility’s Ethics and Compliance Hotline a week later, internal CPS records obtained by the KSAT 12 Defenders show.

Amid continued bad publicity over its handling of February’s deadly winter storm and as it draws closer to formally asking for a double-digit rate increase, the job approval rating of CPS Energy continues to sink, according to a new poll of likely Bexar County voters.

District 2 teams up with CPS Energy and host Utility Assistance Fair amid disconnections

Neighbors in the Cinco Lakes subdivision on the far Southwest Side say they’re being left in reoccurring periods of darkness.

The city’s water and power utilities both put a hold on service disconnections in March 2020 because of the pandemic. Since then, the number of customers behind on their payments has swelled. Now they’re at risk unless they can start making good on their past-due accounts.

The future of a downtown CPS Energy-owned property is still uncertain, after CPS Energy trustees voted 4-1 Monday to seemingly both pursue a plan to give part of the property away, and also to look into options for selling it if that doesn’t pan out.

The utility has not increased its rates for about eight years, but speaking with media members on Monday, CEO Paula Gold-Williams listed off issues like unpaid bills, investment in infrastructure, and $1 billion in bills related to the February Freeze, as helping to drive the likely rate increase.

Back in 2015, CPS Energy’s trustees at the time agreed to split a nearly 7-acre surplus property at the corner of Camden Street and W. Jones Avenue in half, conveying the southern portion to the San Antonio Museum of Art while selling off the northern portion. Now, staring down the barrel of some tough financial straits, including a near-certain rate increase, the utility's current trustees will need to decide if giving away millions of dollars worth of prime, downtown real estate is still the best idea.

Officials with CPS Energy this month were forced to release a copy of a 2020 complaint that alleges its president and CEO, Paula Gold Williams, repeatedly mistreated members of the utility’s senior leadership team.

The leaders of San Antonio's utilities will be featured in a "State of Utilities" update hosted by the North San Antonio Chamber of Commerce.

CPS Energy will be sending crews to Houston on Wednesday morning to assist in restoring power to areas affected by Hurricane Nicholas.

Crews working for CPS Energy unearthed what could be caskets while digging on the Northwest side Wednesday night.

CPS Energy worked overnight to restore power across San Antonio after <a href="https://www.ksat.com/weather/2021/09/06/afternoon-downpours-possible-on-labor-day/" target="_blank">Labor Day thunderstorms</a><a href="https://www.ksat.com/weather/2021/09/06/afternoon-downpours-possible-on-labor-day/" target="_blank"> </a>caused thousands of residents and businesses to lose power.

Students at Bush Middle School in the North East Independent School District got an unexpected holiday on Friday due to a power outage at the school.

“Our community saved 211megawatts (MW) of power today. We saved enough to power 42,200 homes for an hour on a hot summer day,” a spokesperson said.

Read about tips to help reduce demand on the energy grid (and save money!)

Electricity disconnects are coming back this year, but CPS Energy customers don’t have to be disconnected.

Tips to help reduce demand on the energy grid (and save money!)

Tips to help reduce demand on the energy grid (and save money!)

It’s been six months since the deadly February winter storm left millions across the state without power for days, and many questions about what went wrong remain unanswered. The KSAT Explains team and the Defenders have been closely following the fallout of the storm. We take a look at four things we've learned so far.

Airing at 9 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 17: A special collaboration between KSAT Explains and the Defenders

Tips to help reduce demand on the energy grid (and save money!)

Tips to help reduce demand on the energy grid (and save money!)

Before Fred Bonewell was promoted in June to be CPS Energy’s new chief operating officer, his signature appeared on a March 2017 agreement that laid out the working conditions for the utility’s wage-scale employees.

CPS Energy will move to its normal billing operations this fall after more than a year of suspending disconnections due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Attorneys hired by CPS Energy have attempted to block the release of complaints filed against President & CEO Paula Gold-Williams by members of the utility’s senior legal team, claiming their contents are confidential and should remain out of public view.

CPS Energy is calling on state leaders to strengthen its ties with the rest of the U.S. power grid in order to avert another disaster like the one that shut off powers to millions in February.

CPS Energy is warning its customers of an active scam in which a caller demands payment or threatens to shut off utility service.

The Committee on Emergency Preparedness presented its analysis of what went wrong during the extended freezing temperatures and how the city and its utilities could prepare better next time.

CPS Energy’s senior legal team lodged internal complaints against its President and CEO Paula Gold-Williams in the weeks before the attorneys resigned from the utility, internal records obtained this week by the KSAT 12 Defenders confirm.

A number of power plants were inexplicably offline at the same time that Texas was experiencing record June demand for electricity. ERCOT officials are still working to determine why.

The Bexar County Office of Emergency Management has opened eight cooling centers to help residents get a reprieve from the heat, as ERCOT and CPS Energy have asked people to reduce electric use.

Facing a billion-dollar financial hole from February’s deadly winter storm, CPS Energy has now spent over $2.5 million in outside fees to fight those bills, records obtained by the KSAT 12 Defenders show.

A map recently produced by CPS Energy showed something many San Antonio residents suspected was true during Winter Storm Uri — outages were vastly unequal between neighborhoods.

The city of San Antonio is hoping the final findings of the February winter storm’s response efforts are polished before being released, which is why the date of release is now June 24 instead of June 15.

The City of San Antonio has opened cooling centers across town for residents needing shelter from the heat.

Two weeks before a deadly winter storm hit San Antonio, killing a still untold number of people, CPS Energy had become ‘seriously past due’ on bills for its customized weather platform, records obtained by the KSAT 12 Defenders confirm.

CPS Energy’s chief legal officer is among several executives of the utility who have decided to leave the company, officials confirmed Wednesday night.

The City of San Antonio will have five area libraries open as cooling centers on Sunday while hundreds of residents remain without power.

The City of San Antonio has opened a temporary shelter amid storm-related power outages CPS Energy customers are experiencing.

San Antonio city leaders announced on Saturday that the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center would be utilized as a shelter while CPS Energy crews continue to work to restore power to more than 5,000 area customers following severe thunderstorms.

A man who survived after a San Antonio home he was renting was destroyed in an explosion is now filing a lawsuit for $1 million in damages.

San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg joined the KSAT Q&A to discuss winter storm-related CPS Energy bills, vaccine incentives and his new office.

In a conference room with whiteboards and glass doors, it finally happened.

CPS customers are bracing themselves for the next financial brunt.

Gary Gold, the chief financial officer of CPS Energy who figured to play a prominent role as the utility attempts to dig itself out from a billion dollar hole, will instead depart the company next month.

Former District 8 Councilman Reed Williams told city council he expects the Committee on Emergency Preparedness to wrap up its work with a report by June 15. Mayor Ron Nirenberg established the committee to examine what went wrong during February's winter freeze, which left many without power or water.

For the latest updates on outages, click <a href="https://outagemap.cpsenergy.com/" target="_blank">here </a>or view the map below. More on the forecast <a href="https://www.ksat.com/weather/2022/01/13/wildfire-risk-for-san-antonio-surrounding-areas-saturday/" target="_blank">here</a>.

CPS Energy, the nation’s largest municipally owned utility company, gets its weather forecasts from a college student who has not been compensated more than $716 in a single week, invoices obtained by the KSAT 12 Defenders show.

During the third day of February’s bitter freeze, as hundreds of thousands of CPS Energy customers tried to survive without power, President and CEO Paula Gold-Williams and other senior leaders of the utility drafted a letter of support for her and management, according to internal emails obtained by the KSAT 12 Defenders.

Ownership groups for a pair of San Antonio apartment complexes have joined a long list suing CPS Energy over the utility’s preparation and response to February’s winter storm.

CPS Energy announced that part of a Northeast Side roadway would be closed on Sunday as technicians made repairs to equipment damaged in a recent traffic collision.

The public’s job approval rating of CPS Energy took a nosedive following February’s deadly winter storm and widespread power outages, according to a new poll of likely Bexar County voters.

As CPS Energy continues to file lawsuits against entities it claims contributed to massive natural gas bills it racked up during February’s winter storm, energy experts and officials from some the companies targeted by the suits say the utility’s poor risk management is to blame.

Most customers will see a one-time credit of $11 or less

In mid-February, Texas was hit with a winter storm unlike any we’ve seen in years. In the wake of that storm, Texans are left with many questions.

Two more San Antonio families joined a growing list of people who have filed wrongful death lawsuits against CPS Energy, claiming the utility contributed to the deaths of their loved ones in February, court records obtained by the KSAT 12 Defenders show.

Two more San Antonio families have filed lawsuits against CPS Energy, claiming poor preparation from the utility ahead of February’s winter storm contributed to the deaths of their loved ones.

18-wheeler took out road sign and power lines on I-35 near Eisenhauer Road on Tuesday afternoon. San Antonio police said that the estimated damage to the power and communication lines is $1.5 million dollars. The collision happened at Interstate Highway 35 North and Eisenhauer Road and involved an 18-wheeler. An 18-wheeler was involved in a crash Tuesday afternoon that took down a road sign and a utility pole near I-35 and Eisenhauer Road. An 18-wheeler was involved in a crash Tuesday afternoon that took down a road sign and a utility pole near I-35 and Eisenhauer Road.

CPS Energy CEO says the company is facing $1 billion in charges after winter stormSAN ANTONIO – CPS Energy has filed lawsuits against many of its natural gas suppliers for “unlawful and unconscionable price gouging” during the February winter storm. According to a news release, certain natural gas suppliers charged CPS Energy up to 15,000% more for natural gas. The utility said the price hike came during a time when 52% of the electricity generated was from natural gas. CPS Energy claims that Comstock Resources, a natural gas producer from Texas, stated that the natural gas prices they were able to charge during the winter storm were “…like hitting the jackpot...” the release said. That is essentially what happened with natural gas prices during the storm.

The $500 million line of credit is part of a multifaceted strategic plan intended to protect customers from high costs. CPS Energy officials will be seeking federal and state financial and policy assistance, regulatory intervention and other avenues, such as negotiations. CPS Energy says it’s facing charges of more than $1 billion for the power and natural gas it purchased during the February winter storm when prices for both skyrocketed. AdThere was little discussion during the meeting about how the financing would eventually affect CPS Energy customers. “The utility will only utilize this line of credit when it is needed and, if utilized, the debt will have no negative financial impact on the City or customers’ bills, and can be accommodated within CPS Energy’s existing financial plan,” CPS Energy said in a news release.

As temperatures plunged and snow and ice whipped the state, much of Texas' power grid collapsed, followed by its water systems. Currently, the Texas power market operates as “energy-only,” which encourages scarcity because generators are paid only when they provide power. “I absolutely think that the decision to deregulate Texas’ power grid was a mistake. At the state level, Texas should have created some type of emergency fund or plan to prepare for a winter storm. “By deregulating Texas’ power grid from others in the U.S. state leaders left us vulnerable and literally in the dark.

Bexar County Judge Nelson WolffWhat could have been done differently at the local level to better prepare for and respond to the deadly storm? “ERCOT, the manager of the state energy grid, forced CPS Energy to shed load during the long freeze event, which was the root cause of the outages in our community. We must also examine backup generators for water pumping stations.”AdDo you believe state leaders’ decision to deregulate Texas’ power grid was a mistake? “The deregulation of the state power grid answers the call of a market-based economy. We need: better communication; better coordination; and better preparation.

SAN ANTONIO – The family of a San Antonio man who died in February is suing CPS Energy over his death. The wrongful death suit, filed Monday in the 166th District Court, accused the San Antonio utility of negligence that caused the death of Esequiel Mendoza. In the week before his death, Mendoza was not able to receive his usual life-saving dialysis treatment due to controlled outages imposed by CPS Energy at the request of the state grid, ran by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas. It is at least the second wrongful death suit filed against CPS Energy related to the winter storm. AdAttorneys for CPS Energy declined to address the pending litigation on Friday morning.

SAN ANTONIO – CPS Energy on Friday sued the Electric Reliability Council of Texas after an independent monitor for the Public Utility Commission reported the grid managers overcharged power companies during the winter storm. In the lawsuit, CPS Energy accused ERCOT of not paying what it owes to the San Antonio utility. “ERCOT has short paid approximately $2.5 billion to the market participants, and at least $18 million is owed to CPS Energy for the Winter Storm Event,” according to the court filing. “CPS Energy is taking this action to defend its customers. Price charts for the natural gas spot market show natural gas increased nearly two-fold Feb. 11, before spiking Feb. 17.

SAN ANTONIO – Editor’s note: This story is a look back at some of the biggest developments of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Here’s a look back at some of the dramatic changes that occurred from March 11 to March 18 in San Antonio as COVID-19 officially became a crisis. March 11, 2020The San Antonio Spurs’ 2019-2020 season was cut short when the NBA decided to suspend the season until further notice. Universities and colleges across San Antonio announced an extension to spring break. Some of the malls in San Antonio and many of the retailers began to close or limit hours.

SAN ANTONIO – A CPS Energy senior director sought to keep information about pump station power outages confidential last month as the city’s water situation worsened, according to emails obtained by the KSAT 12 Defenders. CPS Energy officials this week defended Kruse’s email, claiming utility infrastructure could have been the target of threats had the information it contained not remained confidential. AdRelated: CPS Energy uses a college student for weather forecasting. CPS Energy officials refused multiple requests from the Defenders to make Kruse or President & CEO Paula Gold-Williams available for an interview. AdBut the records released by SAWS also show that messaging from CPS Energy was, at times, disjointed during the early stages of the outages.

SAN ANTONIO – CPS Energy customers are not expected to see huge additional fuel or purchased power charges from the winter storm when the February 2021 bills are released beginning Monday, the utility said Friday. “CPS Energy is currently assessing the validity of the additional fuel and purchased power costs from the winter storm and is currently not passing them through to customers,” a news release said. Gold-Williams said CPS would pursue regulatory assistance and help from elected officials to avoid customers shouldering that load. The utility said a team of energy advisors is ready to work with customers to discuss their bills and to help with payment arrangements. “While we must and will pay all justified and legitimate business costs, our CPS Energy team will continue to fight to maintain our commitment to affordability.”AutoPay was reinstated on Feb. 26.