The rising price of power leads to concerns about the next CPS Energy bill

San antonio – Power may have been scarce for CPS customers this week, but it will probably be expensive as well.

Now that the reliability crisis is over, Paula Gold-Williams, CEO of CPS Energy, says that affordability issues threaten due to the high fuel costs during the cold weather. Gold-Williams tried to calculate the cost of the event, but “it’s going to be huge”, and they try to minimize the impact on customers’ bills.

“I would say we understand that it would be unacceptable for customers to just bear the cost on their monthly bill and as if someone could pay for it,” Gold-Williams said. “So we work diligently – the financial services team works diligently and tries to figure out ways to really spread the cost, maybe you know 15 – I mean, ten years or longer to make it affordable. We did not fully assess it. ”

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Gold-Williams told reporters during a Monday briefing that supply and demand were largely at work during the cold weather, which pushed many exciting units off the state and froze natural gas resource heads.

“We could see from the beginning of this event – even before the Monday issue – that the price of power and the supply of power had caused prices to rise,” Gold-Williams said. ‘Again, I would mention that the natural gas I saw increased by 7,000 percent and by 10,000 percent. I stopped counting on 16,000 percent. ”

Part of your CPS account is based on a fuel adjustment levy, which covers the fuel costs associated with CPS power generation, renewable power purchases and open energy market purchases. So how much CPS has to pay to get power for you will affect how much you end up paying.

These fuel costs usually carry the bill over a period of 45 to 60 days, but CPS is trying to find a way to spread the costs longer.

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Although the final effect on your account is not yet clear, CPS officials have stressed that it has not disconnected customers since March.

The utility will have to use a large portion of its cash to get through the immediate demands to pay for the fuel it had, and to use some of its credit as well, Gold-Williams said. Eventually, a mortgage may be needed to spread the cost.

The CPS executive said the plans with the CPS council, the city council and answering community questions are necessary, but she estimates they have about 60 to 120 days to work them out, or it could be the ability of the utility to buy affects. fuel in the market now.