SAN ANTONIO —  Benny Ethridge has been in the energy industry for more than 30 years. He’s been serving as the executive vice president of energy supply for CPS Energy in San Antonio for the last seven years.

“We want them involved,” Ethridge said of CPS Energy's customers. “We want them to understand what we’re doing and why we are doing it. We really want their insight.”

CPS is doing its annual power generation assessment to determine when to replace aging power plants, add more renewable options and plan for population growth.

“About 115 megawatts per year in demand growth, just because we have more people moving in,” Ethridge said. “That’s about 23,000 households per year.”

Ethridge says there are about 2,100 megawatts of aging gas units. They struggle to keep up, and need to be replaced by 2030.

“These units have reached the end of their designed life,” Ethridge said. “Their core systems have aged to the point where they are no longer consistently reliable.”

Instead of fixing old units, the energy supplier believes that money is better spent on new tech. By the end of the year, CPS plans to make updated generation plan recommendations to the board of trustees. But not without getting community input.

“Very engaged community,” Ethridge said. “They understand the ramifications of the decisions we would make and they want to participate in that. We welcome that because they pay their light bills.”

At open houses, customers can speak with experts like Ethridge so everyone can get a better understanding.

“I wanted to see what the future plans were for our public energy utility,” said Destiny Guerra, Texas A&M-San Antonio student.

Destiny Guerra is from San Antonio. As a college student, she appreciates CPS’ transparency with this process.

“Direct, straight answers,” Guerra said. “As a younger generation individual, more confidence about where reliability of the energy in my community.”

CPS also surveyed customers about priorities. System reliability and climate resiliency ranked first, followed by affordability and environmental sustainability. For future power sources, customers preferred renewable energy, or a blend of gas, wind and solar energy.

“Our board will decide what they think we should do moving forward,” Ethridge said. “Then we’ll get started. We’ve got a lot of work to do and we don’t have too much time to do it in.”