SAN ANTONIO — Nine months after the Big Freeze, the Interim President & CEO of CPS Energy is assuring customers that they're prepared for this winter.
Since February, the energy company has listened to feedback from customers about what needs improvement.
Their focus now is on three key areas, they say, will better prepare us for another freeze.
The information was revealed to the public in a Tele Town Hall Tuesday night.
In the CPS Energy Town Hall, customers were able to question company leaders directly.
"How is CPS Energy going to guarantee that we don't have another disastrous outage like we did this past February?" asked customer, Francine Jones. "What are the steps that are being taken to avoid that?"
Rudy Garza, the Interim President & CEO of CPS Energy, joined three of his colleagues to answer questions.
"We're doing everything we can," Garza told KENS 5. "We know it was a bad experience."
Garza says preparations these past 37 weeks are working to ensure history doesn't repeat itself.
"All the preventive maintenance that we believe will put us in a better place is in process and we're going to be ready for our power plants to run come January, February timeframe," he explained.
The company is focusing on three areas for improvements:
First, they're beefing up the weatherization of power plants.
"Make sure that they have the heaters, that they had protection from the weather," said Garza. "Then we got a third party to come in and validate that we were focused in on the right areas."
The maintenance schedule for power plants moved to a different date. This means no plant outages will take place during the coldest parts of winter.
"In the February March timeframe. A lot of those plants are online now again or coming back online soon," said Garza.
Second, CPS Energy reprogrammed their "load shed" system.
This means when ERCOT requires CPS to switch off power supply to groups of customers, CPS will be able to better manage outages so customizers won't go without power as often or as long.
"We reprogrammed our system to put more circuits back into the amount of capacity we have to rotate those outages around town. We would actually now be able to accommodate more load than what ERCOT was asking for in February," said Garza. "If we got back into a similar situation, we would be able to maintain the 15 minutes on, 15 minutes off experience that is how the system should work."
Third, the company is improving their communication. Should a severe weather event come our way, CPS Energy plans to send life-saving information in advance so families can make a plan.
In February, natural gas prices soared nearly 16,000%, sending a $1 billion bill to CPS Energy.
To be better prepared, Garza says the company is getting a bigger supply of natural gas this winter, along with more gas storage.
This, he says, will help price stability stay in check in case the cost of natural gas spikes again. This proactive approach can also help keep our power bills at reasonable rates, Garza added.
CPS Energy is also more connected at the leadership level with SAWS. Garza says both utility companies are working together to better understand how each other operates, that way a power outage event like what happened in February doesn't also become a water challenge in the community.
"I am confident that we have focused on the things that we can control," said Garza.