SBEC Winter Storm Uri Update
February 19, 2021
Members of SBEC, please know that we are all concerned about the event that hit our system early Monday morning and the effect that it will have on your electric bill going forward. First and foremost-the $9.00 per kWh is a snapshot during the winter storm and not for the entire month of February. While it is a certainty that the cold will cause your usage to increase during this time, the higher G&T increase will NOT BE reflected on this billing period. We do not even have our G&T bill for the month.
Once we have the bill in hand we can then and only then know what the increase will be and how (SBEC Management and Board of Directors) will mitigate it for our members.
We will certainly be billed for this increase and we must pay it.
How we collect this from the membership will be discussed and we will devise a plan where we can collect what is owed in a reasonable way. The earliest anything could happen would be on your March billing cycle.
Remember, as a member owned Cooperative, we work for you and it is your interest that we have utmost on our minds while crafting a plan for this expected large increase.
I plead with you to let us work for you and stop spreading opinions and fears on social media. We don’t have all the facts in hand yet and I promise I will keep you updated on any developments as they surface. We are merely trying to be transparent and proactive in alerting you of the situation at hand.
Please remain calm and let me work for and with you. Our CSRs will be able to talk individually with you about your billing concerns Monday – Friday 8am to 5pm.
We received notice on Friday, February 19th at 10:35am that ERCOT has suspended the EEA event for power grid instability.
Here at SBEC, we are clear of any outages related to the winter storm. We have sent two crews to the Navasota Valley Electric Cooperative in Franklin, TX to help them restore power to their badly damaged system. They were dealing with the effects of the winter storm since Thursday of last week. We will send another crew to Central Texas Electric Cooperative in Fredericksburg, TX as their system has been harshly hit by the storm as well…with over 500 broken poles.
SBEC offices are open and staffed as we return to normal operations mode. Our employees are here to help the SBEC membership with any concerns.
The next issue for us, as an electric distribution utility, is dealing with high bill concerns that will follow this historic cold weather event. Our members on prepaid accounts are already seeing the effects of their heaters increased usage. Our members on normal monthly billing cycles will see the effects in the weeks to follow as their billing cycle closes. That coupled with the fact that they were involved in rolling outages will have many members questioning their usage and billing. We have a portal or app for our members to see their kWh usage by the month, day and hour, going back to 2015 (if they have been on the system that long). The SmartHub portal/app can be accessed from our website and clearly shows the kWh usage and the periods of no kWh usage during the rolling outages.
PLEASE SEE SMARTHUB EXAMPLE PIC WITH THIS POST.
Beyond the high bill concerns that our members are having now or may have in the weeks to come with increased kWh usage due to the cold weather, the news reports of $9 per kWh pricing from ERCOT, because of the grid crisis, is causing a growing concern with our membership. As of today, our members price per kWh for the next billing cycle will not be affected. SBEC will not get the wholesale power bill for the event until sometime in March as all of the market transactions are settled. There are a lot of unknown possibilities in this situation currently. However, SBEC anticipates that the generation and transmission (G&T) portion of your bill will be extremely affected by this historic winter weather event. How we will handle this situation will be a topic for our next meeting of the SBEC Board of Directors on Tuesday, February 23rd. SBEC, along with all electric utility providers in the ERCOT market, is paying close attention to this matter and have been or will be in contact with our state and national legislators as we feel the natural gas pricing and ERCOT’s handling of the matter reprehensible. We encourage our members to contact their state and congressional representatives and voice their concerns as well.
State and Congressional Representatives for the SBEC are include:
US Senator John Cornyn https://www.cornyn.senate.gov/node/5853
US Senator Ted Cruz https://www.cruz.senate.gov/?p=form&id=16
US Representative Michael McCaul michael.mccaul@mail.house.gov
US Representative Michael Cloud michael.cloud@mail.house.gov
US Representative Kevin Brady https://kevinbrady.house.gov/contact/
Texas Governor Greg Abbot https://gov.texas.gov/contact
Texas Senator Charles Schwertner Charles.Schwertner@senate.texas.gov
Texas Senator Lois Kolkhorst Lois.Kolkhorst@senate.texas.gov
Texas Representative Ben Leman ben.leman@house.texas.gov
Texas Representative Cecil Bell Cecil.Bell@house.texas.gov
Texas Representative Tom Oliverson tom.oliverson@house.texas.gov
Rest assured we will take into consideration how this large increase in the G&T portion of your
bill will affect our membership while seeking a viable solution to recover the costs. Look for an updated post on this subject sometime after next week’s board meeting. Again, we do not know the full effects of this increase until we get our wholesale power bill in March. We also understand this time is financially difficult for many of our members. If you have any questions about your billing or need to make any arrangements, please give our CSRs a call Monday-Friday from 8-5. We are here to help you during this time.
A Message from SBEC General Manager Billy Marricle:
Members of SBEC, please know that we are all concerned about the event that hit our system early Monday morning and the effect that it will have on your electric bill going forward. First and foremost-the $9.00 per kWh is a snapshot during the winter storm and not for the entire month of February. While it is a certainty the cold weather that caused your usage to increase this week, the higher G&T increase will NOT BE reflected on this billing period. We do not even have our G&T bill for the month.
Once we have the bill in hand, then and only then can we know what the increase will be and how we (SBEC Management and Board of Directors) will mitigate it for our members.
We will certainly be billed for this increase and we must pay it. How we collect this from the membership will be discussed and we will devise a plan where we can collect what is owed in a reasonable way. The earliest anything could happen would be on your March billing cycle.
Remember, as a member owned Cooperative, we work for you and it is your interest that we have utmost on our minds while crafting a plan for this expected large increase.
I plead with you to let us work for you and stop spreading opinions and fears on social media. We don’t have all the facts in hand yet and I promise I will keep you updated on any developments as they surface. We are merely trying to be transparent and proactive in alerting you of the situation at hand.
Please remain calm and let me work for and with you. Our CSRs will be able to talk individually with you about your billing concerns Monday – Friday 8am to 5pm.