Weekly Update – Thursday, March 18, 2021
SBEC has finally received the final wholesale power invoice, from the Winter Strom URI event. SBEC will be obligated to pay the approximately $80 million dollars in power costs for the month of February. A typical February month usually costs SBEC approximately $4 million. As I have said all along - we do not expect our membership to pay this shortfall immediately. As stated earlier, the payback will be over a period of years, not months.
Tuesday, the SBEC Board of Directors held a special board meeting addressing this expected bill and the impact it will have on SBEC members. The staff and directors discussed several scenarios on how we plan to approach the payback as to have the least impact on your monthly bills. Rest assured that your Board of Directors will consider all options to lessen your monthly impact. I hope to roll out a plan to you next week after our regular board meeting. We have submitted scenarios that would be an approximate $6 to $8 increase per month for every 1,000 kwhs used. Today, if you use 1,000 kwhs, your bill would be $138.00. This impending increase will be based on how many years we will stretch it out. Currently, we are looking at several multi-year options. This is based on what we know at this moment.
Many of you have kept up with the Legislative proceedings and know that the Senate and House are divided on several issues. Sadly, we do not know if we are going to get any relief on some of the amount we are billed or not. Any legislative action taken may impact whichever scenario your SBEC board choses to utilize, now and in the future. So, we will have to move forward with what we know at this time. We have and will continue to petition our elected officials to come up with an equitable relief solution. It is imperative that our elected officials hear from you with your concerns over this matter.
I will post again next week when I know more.
State and Congressional Representatives for the SBEC area 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
Lt. Governor Dan Patrick https://www.ltgov.state.tx.us/contact/
Texas Speaker of the House of Representatives Dade Phelan https://house.texas.gov/members/member-page/email/?district=21&session=87
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
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