SPS wins $113M Texas grid reliability grant
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- Southwestern Public Service will receive $113 million through the Texas Energy Fund's non-ERCOT grant program to replace power poles, install grid monitoring equipment, and improve reliability for 167,000 customers in the Panhandle and South Plains.
- The grant will fund a drone-based pole inspection program covering more than 273,000 structures, pole-mounted sensors for real-time hazard detection along distribution lines, and other equipment modernization.
- The Texas Energy Fund has allocated more than $4 billion in total since launch, with about $3.65 billion inside ERCOT supporting new gas capacity and roughly $650 million outside ERCOT going to weatherization and grid hardening.
- The non-ERCOT program launched in 2024 to fund generation and grid upgrades following the widespread blackouts during Winter Storm Uri in 2021, with the Public Utility Commission of Texas administering the fund.
- PUCT Chairman Thomas Gleeson said in a statement that each reliability project "complements the next, creating multiple layers of protection for consumers and businesses," spanning substations, poles, and overhead wires.
- SPS interim president Brad Baldridge called the upgrades important for strengthening the grid, preparing for severe weather, and keeping costs as low as possible for the communities served.
- Other recent PUCT awards under the energy fund include $30 million to Rita Blanca Electric Cooperative for a new substation and nearly $9 million to Lamb County Electric Cooperative for transmission line replacement and increased transformer capacity.
Why it matters: Texas has now committed more than $4 billion through the Energy Fund to harden the grid and add generation after Winter Uri's blackouts, and SPS's $113 million slice puts drone inspections and real-time sensors across 273,000 structures — a concrete, infrastructure-level test of whether the state's outside-ERCOT reliability dollars translate into faster outage response for 167,000 ratepayers.
