San Antonio Water System

Office of Energy Strategy Background

In 2023, San Antonio Water System spent approximately $47 million or 10 percentage of its annual operating budget on energy, making it the fourth largest use of funds behind debt service, salaries and wages, and water procurement. In the last 10 years, SAWS’ cost of energy has increased 15 percent mainly because of increasing fuel adjustment charges. Strategically managing energy consumption will be key to reducing the impact of future energy cost increases.

A recent commitment to strategic energy management has emphasized the need for planning and developing committed goals for energy reduction. As a result, SAWS has adopted its first Energy Strategy Master Plan. This plan will amplify SAWS efforts by identifying energy savings measures and committing resources towards achieving energy savings goals.

The Office of Energy Strategy is responsible for a multitude of tasks including paying utility bills, developing utility budget forecasts, serving as CPSE liaisons, and identifying and implementing energy savings reduction efforts.

2023 OES Highlights

• In 2023, SAWS developed its first ever Energy Strategy Master Plan. In addition to reducing utility expenditures, this plan will be key in supporting the City of San Antonio’s climate action goals. The Master Plan serves as a guide for future energy conservation to reduce its energy intensity (kWh/unit) by 10 percent by 2028.
• In total, 2023 energy saving efforts produced $878,381 in verified utility bill savings for SAWS. Projects behind these savings include Strategic Energy Management, District Cooling System Upgrades and Optimization, and Utility Tariff Analysis (see section III). The reason that the utility budget continues to increase despite these savings is that on the Production side we are having to rely much more heavily on energy intensive sources than in years past due to drought and Edwards permit issues (i.e. moving away from Edwards water is more energy intensive and costly).
• CPS Energy’s Demand Response program is a voluntary load curtailment program designed to reduce CPS Energy’s peak load growth by incentivizing customers to shed electrical loads on peak summer days. This year SAWS participated in 27 events and reduced demand by more than 7.5 MW and earned $551,225 in incentives.
• One of CPS Energy’s programs under the umbrella of STEP includes the Commercial Solutions Program. This program incentivizes commercial customers who implement projects aimed at reducing energy consumption, since 2018 SAWS has accumulated $969,521 in rebate incentives.
• Reducing the energy intensity is pursuing low-cost energy conservation measures identified within SAWS’ water, wastewater and district cooling systems. In 2023, these measures have already provided significant energy savings for the wastewater and district cooling systems, reducing energy intensity by 6.3 percent and 4.7 percent, respectively, while water operations increased by 12.8 percent. 2023 was a challenging year as there was a significant drought causing our Edwards Aquifer water source to be under strict usage restrictions. This caused SAWS to use other more energy intensive water sources to supplement the Edwards Aquifer water.
• From 2012 to 2023, utility costs increased 78 percent or 5.4 percent annually. Of this annual growth rate, 4.1 percentage point growth was related to consumption increases, while price increases attributed to 1.3 percentage point annual increases.
• Kilowatt hours increased 56 percent from 2012 to 2023, or 4.1 percent compounded annually. Increases were flat until 2020 when additional water supplies from the Vista Ridge project came online.  2022 and 2023 saw increased KWH usage as both years had significant abnormally high temperatures and were 64 percent and 38 percent lower than normal rainfall, respectively.

kWh– Kilowatt-hour: measured as 1 kilowatt (1,000 watts) of power expended for 1 hour.