Post Winter Storm Uri Update

Friday, February 26th

It has been a week since winter storm Uri released its grip upon our region of Texas. We have heard from many members via telephone calls, emails, social media and personal conversations about the events of last week and the concerns to follow.

The SBEC board of directors and the management is committed to the best interests of our members. We continue to monitor the issues surrounding the ERCOT market transactions during the winter storm and the power grid instability event of last week. The Texas House joint hearing of the State Affairs and Energy Resources Committees and the Texas Senate Business & Commerce Committee are still convened as this post is being made. Both houses of the Texas legislature are hearing from all parties involved in the events of last week. We will be having a meeting with Representative Ben Leman, who serves on the House Energy Resources committee, in the week ahead and are in the process of scheduling a meeting with Senator Charles Schwertner who serves on the Senate Business & Commerce committee. These meetings are in addition to conversations already held with Senator Lois Kolkhorst and US Congressman Michael McCaul’s staff. We will continue to utilize these meetings to voice the concerns of the SBEC membership and management. The one bit of information that members can take from this message is that the board and management will not raise any of the rate components of your electricity bill during the March billing cycle as we have not received the wholesale power bill and will not receive it until mid-March. Subsequently, we will delay the next month’s board meeting, one week, to allow the board and management to study the full financial impacts of last week’s events on the cooperative and devise a plan to act upon it.

We are your cooperative and we welcome your input on these matters of concern.