San Antonio, Texas public power utility CPS Energy recently joined with the Public Utility Commission of Texas to provide leaders from San Antonio and Bexar County, Texas, a tour of CPS Energy and City of San Antonio emergency facilities.
Dana Sotoodeh, a CPS Energy spokesperson, said that the utility had around 35-40 participants who participated in the tour. CPS Energy President and CEO Rudy Garza provided opening remarks to the group.
She said that CPS Energy Headquarters, the utility’s Energy Supply and Market Operations area, CPS Energy’s Emergency Management Center, its Braunig Power Station and the City of San Antonio’s Emergency Operations Center were the facilities that were visited during the tour.
Sotoodeh said that CPS Energy hosts singular location tours on a regular basis, but this was the “first event of this nature where we collaborated with the PUC and emergency management personnel to plan an all day, multi-location relationship building and education event.”
Earlier this year, the PUC initiated a plan to host roadshows within each emergency management region in collaboration with utilities in that specific region.
“They reached out to us to ask” CPS Energy to be the host for the inaugural Region 6 event. “We have committed to doing events like these annually, moving forward,” she said.
“We had over 20 different Emergency Management personnel from our community participate in the tour,” she noted.
“Getting to know our fellow emergency management folks” and providing a tour “of our facilities, builds trust and further strengthens our ability to respond in an emergency. Engaging with them helps us gain a better understanding of some of the challenges and complexities they deal with on a daily basis. At the end of the day, we all share a unified approach to supporting each other and our community.”
