CPS attempts to vault board, threaten public with higher rates

Greg Harman
gharman@sacurrent.com

Monday afternoon, CPS Energy’s top brass released their $13 billion figure to the board of directors, including new mayor Julián Castro.

Toward the end of the meeting, board members expressed the meekest of hesitations.

Board Chair Aurora Geis stressed that with technologies developing as rapidly as they are, the utility is shooting at a moving target. That anything can still happen. It was an invitation for boosters of renewable power sources to believe yet that nukes are not, in fact, a done deal.

Then, there was hesitancy to embrace the current plan to sell off a chunk of the proposed nuke expansion into the open market as acceptable policy. Such sales occur as new capacity comes online and demand steadily grows, but the nuke expansion would be the first time merchant operations were adopted as policy. Meeting attendees were assured the board was still “discussing” this potential shift.

CPS’s GM Milton Lee and Acting GM (Formerly Acting GM?) Steve Bartley appear to have taken the board on directly in a story scheduled for tomorrow’s* Express-News, in which they warn that should the board fail to allow the utility to grow into a merchant power operation San Antonio customers would have to eat even higher bills than the nuke plant would otherwise require.

Vicki Vaughan reports:

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