SAN ANTONIO – Four years later, even the memory of the February 2021 frost can be chilling.

Rotating and unbalanced power outages hit the city and caused problems with the city’s water system. Statewide, more than 200 people have died.

As the temperature begins to drop again, the city of San Antonio’s two utilities say they are ready for winter. Executives from CPS Energy and San Antonio Water System (SAWS) appeared before the City Council’s Municipal Utilities Committee Monday afternoon to discuss their preparations.

Asked by Councilman Marc Whyte (D10) how each utility would fare if the freeze happened again, Rudy Garza, CEO of CPS Energy, said “the experience will be better” and Andrea Breymer, director of operations of SAWS, said: “I think we are in better shape. than in 2021.“

Benny Ethridge Jr., director of energy supply, said the utility had not planned any maintenance in January or February that would take its plants offline and that it had spent a lot of money and effort to make its units more robust.

“We have also strengthened our gas system. We have added additional storage and the gas suppliers have also ramped up their programs,” Ethridge said. “So we have a much more robust system than we had when we first experimented with Uri.”

CPS officials say they are also better equipped to handle rotating outages if they become necessary again. SAWS CEO Robert Puente was quick to point out that the service outages four years ago were the work of the national grid operator, ERCOT.

“Uri and its aftermath would not have happened without ERCOT and what they did to this community,” Puente told the committee. “CPS is 99.99% reliable and a very good utility. When they didn’t have the power to give it to us, that’s what caused us to close.“

A report on freezing by an ad hoc commission found that some SAWS outages were a surprise to the utility. However, it also agreed to carry out alternating outages at some of its pumping stations to aid CPS Energy’s load shedding attempts.

However, Puente tells KSAT that “now they know which ones are critical and should not be shut down.”

The two utilities also have a more than $300 million plan to install backup generators around the SAWS system. Although the work is already underway, it is not expected to be completed before 2030.