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More storms in San Antonio led to longer power outages in 2025
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Power outages got longer and impacted more CPS Energy customers last year.
The utility provider shared its internal metrics at its board meeting last month, showing where it did and did not meet its goals over the past year.
That included power outages. On average, customers experienced power outages for 15 minutes longer than the previous year. More than 1.1 million customers were affected by outages, an increase of 169,062 customers from the previous year.
Storms plus planned outages for maintenance work accounted for the increase in outages, Chief Strategy Officer Elaina Ball told CPS Energy board members on April 27.
“We had more storms than we forecast. We plan on a weather-normalized basis, but had a significant number of storms,” she said.
CPS Energy measures its statistics during fiscal years that start Feb. 1 and end Jan. 31.
In 2023 and 2024, CPS Energy customers experienced, on average, outages of just over an hour. Ball said that excludes major outages for many customers from weather-related events, but that smaller weather-related outages are included in the data. In 2025, that average outage number was up to 75 minutes.
In an email, CPS Energy officials said they would take more steps to mitigate the impact of weather on outages, like tree-trimming. Climate change is linked to increasingly intense storms and weather-related events, which could lead to more weather-related outages in the future.
“CPS Energy continues to plan for and mitigate the effects of severe weather through a combination of grid hardening, vegetation management, targeted infrastructure upgrades and data‑driven reliability improvements,” communications specialist Milady Nazir said in an email.
Ball said that CPS Energy expects the average outage duration to increase in the coming years because of concerns about worker safety. CPS Energy expects its average outages to remain higher because the utility will continue to turn off power lines when employees are taking on dangerous work.
Worker safety was another area where CPS Energy missed its internal metrics. The utility measures its recordable incident rate, or RIR, and reported its highest number of employee injuries in the past six years.
“This reporting includes injuries — from bee stings to cuts and contusions, to electrical contact — as well as motor vehicle events, equipment-related incidents, near misses, and other safety events,” officials wrote in an email.
CPS Energy had 51 injuries recorded last year. Nearly half of those injuries were related to muscle or skeletal issues, officials said in an email. Ball said CPS Energy has taken steps to reduce those injuries by providing more education on preventative measures during onboarding and training.
CPS Energy officials said they also have been encouraging incident reporting, which has increased 83% since 2020.
“A strong reporting culture equates to identifying and addressing issues in a timely manner. The rise in RIR is directly tied to this improved reporting behavior, with a corresponding reduction in more serious injuries,” Nazir said in an email.
CPS Energy did hit some of its goals.
The utility said it was maintaining financial stability. Despite its purchase of power plants in East Texas earlier this year, CPS Energy has enough money on hand to continue operating for more than 150 days.
