Tuesday, March 24, 2026, 9 a.m. (Austin time), Austin City Hall
Committee: Austin Energy Utility Oversight Committee
The Austin Energy Utility Oversight Committee, chaired by Council Member Vela with Council Member Siegel as vice chair, heard public comment on transmission planning and on Austin Energy's design process for small building projects. General Manager Stuart Riley reported on the response to Winter Storm Fern, mutual aid to Nashville, and the newly energized Kramer substation. Staff then briefed the committee on a residential battery demand-response pilot, first-quarter financial results, first-quarter operations including the all-resources RFP, and improvements to Austin Energy's development design and construction process. Council Members Siegel and Alter asked detailed questions on renewable generation goals, the battery pilot's design, RFP proposals, and permitting timelines, and requested follow-up data. Minutes from the January 20, 2026 meeting were approved unanimously.
0:05 1 21 And I will go ahead and call the Austin energy utility oversight committee meeting, uh, to order,
0:13 uh, quorum is present and we will go ahead and move on to public communication.
0:18 Um, ms. Love, will you call the, uh, speakers?
0:21 Yes, can I have al braden followed by cody carr and scott turner.
0:37 Alright, uh, good morning chairman Vela and council members.
0:42 I'm al braden from district seven.
0:44 I'm working on the euc and have been active in the past couple generation plan working groups, but
0:49 today I'm speaking for myself.
0:51 I wanna raise the importance of transmission planning in support of our generation.
0:55 Plan. Transmission is not on today's agenda, but it should be without significant commitments to wires.
1:02 We have a little hope of reaching our climate goals.
1:06 I sent you each a summary of a presentation I gave to euc and let me give you
1:10 a quick recap. Next slide, please.
1:13 Historically, Austin energy was vertically integrated utility serving a much smaller city than the Austin we know today.
1:20 Our energy came from oil and gas in our local area, largely in east Austin, sea home, holly
1:27 decker and sandhill. A couple of dedicated lines also brought in power from further east in fayette and
1:34 south texas. Austin energy was self-reliant and we had very little interconnection to the rest of texas.
1:40 Next slide, please. Our great internet connections were very limited compared to our sister cities.
1:47 This landscape shifted dramatically in the 2014 council generation plan when they committed to, uh, renewable energy as
1:57 a response to our climate crisis generation plans that year and later ratified these goals first for wind,
2:04 then solar, and now batteries and dis distributed energy solutions.
2:09 We believed we had the wires to make all that happen, but with our renewable portfolio spread all
2:14 across texas, the 2020 generation plan showed that we might not be able to close all our fossil
2:20 plants if we didn't import significantly more power.
2:23 Next slide. A major transmission study in 2023 identified the steps needed.
2:29 Please study this work and ask for an update.
2:32 We have just 10 years to reach our zero carbon goals and transmission can take a very long
2:36 time to build. Recent discussion about replacing decker's aging gas peakers is a perfect test case.
2:44 We can either get there by getting in line for 200 megawatts of progressively more expensive gas peakers,
2:50 which by commitment we would close in 2035, or we can build a combination of transmission lines and
2:57 batteries that would yield 200 more megawatts at peak times and continue serving us well into the future
3:04 without adding more emissions in.
3:06 East Austin starting now will help us build those wires that we'll need to close sandhills 600 megawatt
3:12 plants in just 10 years.
3:14 So let's get going.
3:15 Next slide. Ercot is helping with the 765 kilovolt energy superhighway by 2030.
3:23 It will bring vast renewable energy from across the state, drastically reducing congestion and price separation.
3:30 This changes everything. Ask Austin energy to look closely at aligning our renewable energy goals with this new
3:37 transmission opportunity. Thank you very much.
3:41 Thank you mr. Brad.
3:43 If we can have cody carr.
3:47 Cody is not here.
3:48 Person in the audience.
3:50 Can we have scott turner?
3:54 Mr. Turner, welcome.
4:00 Um, good afternoon, uh, Mayor and council.
4:03 Um, I am, uh, a member of the Austin info coalition and also the home builders association.
4:09 And, uh, we appreciate the reorganization efforts that Austin energy is presenting here today.
4:15 Uh, we feel like it's an important first step to really improve, uh, the design process.
4:20 And that, and that design process is the process that Austin energy uses to design infrastructure for new
4:27 projects. Um, almost all home projects that have two or three units are now being required to go
4:33 through this design process.
4:35 And, uh, and there's still a lot of work left to do on it.
4:39 Um, it, it needs a pretty significant overhaul.
4:43 And, and the reason is that it's, it's wasn't built for these building permits.
4:48 It wasn't built to be quick.
4:49 So, um, we'd like to see, um, some additional improvements.
4:54 There have been some, but it still takes longer to get a transformer design today than it does
4:59 to get a building permit.
5:00 And, and I think that says a lot.
5:02 So, um, it shouldn't take weeks.
5:04 What, what, uh, what should just take a few days?
5:07 Um, we'd like to see timelines and response times that, that really correspond to dsds building permit process.
5:15 Uh, we'd like to see a customer service, uh, policy that also corresponds to dsds, uh, process that
5:22 has been very successful in ensuring customers know what's going on and who to talk to as their
5:28 permits are being routed through design.
5:30 Um, and last but not least, we really would like to see the incorporation of some third party
5:36 engineering review, which I know the city manager is encouraging right now, uh, to really help reduce these
5:42 review times. Um, because, um, we really do need to continue down this path of, of really coming
5:49 up with solutions for what is becoming a, a, a, a relatively large barrier for these small projects
5:55 that I know, uh, y'all have been working quite hard to try and, and kind of get outta
5:59 the ground, so to speak.
6:00 So thank you very much.
6:02 Thank you very much.
6:02 Appreciate your testimony. Up next, if we can have ruan jabber followed by james davis, they ahead to leave.
6:12 Sounds like they're not here.
6:14 And lastly, kaba white and she has not joined remotely.
6:20 Great. And so that, uh, that's all the speakers.
6:23 That's everybody. Alright, thank you very much.
6:25 We'll go ahead and move on to approval of the minutes from the January 20th, 2026 meeting.
6:30 Uh, I have, uh, a motion from Council Member uchin, the second from, uh, Council Member Fuentes.
6:35 Uh, all in favor, please indicate, uh, unanimously approve the minutes, and then we will call our general
6:42 manager, uh, stuart riley for his, uh, report.
6:47 Mr. Riley floor is yours.
6:49 Thank you. Good afternoon.
6:50 Uh, again, stuart riley, Austin energy general manager.
6:54 I know we have a lot on the agenda and, uh, I will just try to get through
6:58 this relatively short general manager's report today as quickly as I can.
7:03 Let's see.
7:09 All right, so, um, looking back just a little bit, we just got through our second warmest winter
7:16 on record for the Austin area, but with global warming and climate change and overall warmer winters also
7:24 comes a higher risk of extreme winter events.
7:28 Um, the winter event that swept through Austin from January 24th to January 27th was called winter storm fern.
7:36 And in the days leading up to winter storm fern, um, Austin energy was inspecting and weatherizing equipment.
7:42 We were pre-positioning, um, crews, uh, and resources.
7:45 We were readying our mutual aid contracts and we even, um, brought in some external, a small amount
7:51 of external crews just to be ready in case the conditions called for it.
7:55 Uh, we've gotten much better at preparing for emergencies, responding to outages, but in this case, we're also
8:00 very fortunate that most of the over half inch of precipitation fell as sleet rather than as freezing
8:05 rain. Um, there were still very icy roadways that impacted our ability to respond to the, um, isolated
8:13 outages. We did have a few outages across our service territory.
8:17 Um, I wanna recognize some of our crews who in, in responding to those outages at times, couldn't
8:22 get their vehicle to the, the equipment that needed to be repaired and were walking, uh, half a
8:28 mile back and forth from their vehicle to the equipment to get customer lights back on.
8:32 Um, just the level of dedication, uh, it was very impressive.
8:36 I also want to, um, recognize our power plant employees who kept our assets running.
8:41 That was a tight period for the ercot market.
8:43 It was an expensive period for the ercot market and our power plant employees, um, were essential.
8:50 Uh, indeed all of our, uh, city departments, there was great collaboration across the city.
8:55 There was great support, um, across departments, and the level of collaboration and coordination and communication was, um,
9:02 was unmatched. Um, you know, that dedication also sometimes extends outside of our community and into other communities.
9:11 When winter storm fern that same winter storm got to nashville, tennessee, it actually, the precipitation actually fell
9:18 in the form of freezing rain.
9:20 And, and we know the impacts of over half an inch of ice on trees, on equipment.
9:25 Um, and the, uh, situation that they had in nashville was a carbon copy of what we went
9:31 through in winter storm mar of 2023, half of their customers without power, a two week long restoration.
9:37 We sent crews, um, and critical materials.
9:39 There were supplies that they needed, poles, conductor, other critical materials.
9:44 Uh, we sent 21 line workers, one vehicle coordinator, one safety coordinator, um, up there for a week.
9:50 And, um, they did very impressive work, um, in terms of restoring primary wire, secondary wire, getting a
9:57 lot of customers, um, power back on, and most importantly, making the trip up to nashville, working for
10:04 a week and making the trip back down and doing it all safely and coming home, um, without
10:09 any safety incident. And my leadership team and I were also in touch with the nes nashville electric
10:15 service leadership team during that event.
10:18 Um, because like I said, it was so similar to what we went through in 2023.
10:22 They were actually using our winter storm mara after action report during that event to kind of get
10:29 them a head start on what they needed to do, looking at what, uh, improvements we had made,
10:33 and we plan on getting together with them, uh, here in the near future to, um, go over
10:37 any additional lessons learned.
10:39 Uh, they brought in a lot of external crews, um, a a lot of, of challenges and, and
10:44 we know that very well.
10:45 But, um, hats off to our teams that went up there to assist, um, our public power colleagues
10:52 up in nashville. Lastly, um, in alignment with our electric grid, uh, enhancement efforts outlined in our electric
11:00 system resiliency plan, Austin energy recently energized our new kramer substation to serve parts of north Austin.
11:08 Substations are an integral part of the electric system.
11:11 They connect the high voltage transmission grid to the local power lines that serve our local, uh, areas
11:17 and neighborhoods. Um, this substation, this kramer substation will, uh, provide better redundancy and resiliency for north Austin.
11:26 It will also, uh, serve new development in the domain area.
11:30 We've been planning for the substation since 2019.
11:33 Uh, the end cost of the substation was $25 million, and it highlights our commitment to enhancing our grid,
11:41 growing our infrastructure, and providing reliable, providing reliable and resilient service to our customers.
11:46 And just to take a step back and look at kind of the macro picture here in terms
11:50 of our infrastructure investments, um, looking back historically, we, we've been adding one substation every two to three
11:58 years. Looking at our plan going forward, we need to build two substation, two substations every year for
12:05 the next seven years.
12:06 So we're looking at needing to build three and a half to four times as many substations as
12:11 we built in the past.
12:12 This isn't unique to us.
12:13 This is what other electric utilities that we talk to across the country are seeing.
12:17 This is part of the energy transition.
12:19 Uh, this is part of investing in reliability and resiliency for our community, and also really just supporting,
12:26 uh, a a shift to electricity and, and a shift, uh, to supporting a transportation sector and a
12:33 more electric, um, and, and decarbonized industrial sector as well.
12:37 Um, and chair, that's what I have for you today, and I'm happy to answer any questions.
12:42 Thank you very much.
12:43 Any, uh, questions from the das?
12:44 Councilor Siegel, thank you chair, and thank you jim riley for your report and also for all your
12:49 work, your leadership team, all the a folks who are keeping our utility reliable and innovative, and both
12:56 also environmentally responsible, moving up to our values.
12:59 And, um, I understand that our next meeting, we're gonna hear some recommendations from Austin energy about, uh,
13:04 potentially building new power generation facilities in relation to all our, all resources rfp, uh, including potentially gas