Fifth & State
Your inside look at everything Garland, unscripted. Join Mayor Dylan Hedrick and City Manager Mike Betz as they dive into the topics shaping our city.
Fifth & State
Garland Power & Light: Powering Garland
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In this episode, Mayor Dylan Hedrick and City Manager Mike Betz sit down with Garland Power & Light (GP&L) CEO and General Manager Darrell Cline to spotlight how GP&L serves the community. From why Garland has its own utility to outage response and understanding your energy bill, they break it all down.
Welcome to Fifth and State, your inside look at everything Garland unscripted. Join Mayor Dylan Hedrick and dive into the topics shaping our city. Let's get started.
SPEAKER_03Welcome back to Fifth and State, where we take you behind the scenes of how Garland works. I'm Mayor Dylan Hedrick, and with me as always is City Manager Mike Betts. Good afternoon, Mike. Good afternoon. Today we're talking about something every resident relies on, especially this time of year, electricity. With summer heat reaching triple digits, and many of us are seeing higher energy bills and we're thinking more about reliability. Garland is unique in that we operate our own municipal electric utility. And today we're shining a light on what that means for a community. We have with us the CEO of Garland Power and Light, Darrell Klein. Welcome to the podcast, Daryl.
SPEAKER_01Thank you so much for having me here today, Mayor.
SPEAKER_03We're happy to have you. And so first tell us about your role. What do you oversee at GP ⁇ ? What do you do day-to-day there?
SPEAKER_01So so as the CEO of Garland Power and Light, um I get the privilege to work alongside over 200 amazing and dedicated employees, as well as other city departments. And I particularly want to point out the city's customer service department. In providing electric service to over 77,000 customers, that's roughly about 80% of the city of Garland that Garland Power and Light provides service to. As far as my particular role, you know, given our employees' knowledge and their expertise, many times my role is just really making sure they have the resources available to them and kind of getting out of their way. But there are some times that you know I need to serve as the reminder of what our mission statement is. And that role is to provide safe and reliable electric service at competitive and stable rates, but also to make sure that we're enhancing the city's financial and economic position.
SPEAKER_03And we'll get into all that here coming up. So tell us what drew you to the energy and utilities field in the first place.
SPEAKER_01So a little interesting background. When I was finishing up my master's of public administration at the University of North Texas, my intent was to be a finance director for a city. But coming out of college, I had an opportunity to work with a consulting firm that did uh financial and management consulting for utilities. And that's where I spent uh almost 15 years of my career. And uh one of my clients was the city of Garland and Garland Power and Light. And so an opportunity arose, and um I came here to Garland Power and Light a little over 14 years ago, but that's how I got into the uh utility business was coming out of school and um starting on the consulting side.
SPEAKER_02And how long have you been the CEO now?
SPEAKER_01Uh October 1st will be five years.
SPEAKER_03Five years, that's great. We're glad to have you here in the city for sure. So, for people who are not familiar with Garland Power and Light, what is it, what do they do? You mentioned 77,000 residents and business customers, but what else do we need? What is what is all encompassing MGPL?
SPEAKER_01So uh a a lot of people uh think that you know from a Garland Power and Light perspective, uh that we just provide power uh to uh the city of Garland residents that are customers, and and that is partially true. Uh in addition, we have uh transmission, and if you want to know what transmission lines are, those are the larger transmission towers that you see, the steel towers. Um we have uh a little over 300 miles of transmission line, not just in the Garland area, but throughout the state. Uh we have transmission facilities that are in the northeast Texas area, uh the North Texas area, uh down around close to Houston, and even out in West Texas. Uh in addition, we have power plants that uh generate electricity, and we'll probably talk a little bit more about those in a little bit, but we have plants that generate electricity that are at Levon Lake, and then also at the city of uh Denton. Um not providing power to the city of Denton, but just happen to be located in the city of Denton. Uh in addition, we also have um different power supplies that we buy that come throughout the state, whether they're solar or wind power, and those could be in the panhandle of Texas, all the way down to the uh southern part of the state close to uh the the border.
SPEAKER_02So, what's the di the difference, Darrell, between the transmission lines that you described, the big steel towers, and the poles that come to people's houses and and explain the difference in what they do.
SPEAKER_01So really it it's voltage. And so you're having to take um electrons, which are the electricity, and you're trying to to basically transmit those electrons over um uh a large um long period of space there. It may be from um uh generation facilities that are are like at Lake Lavon or generation facilities that are out in West Texas, but to be able to to transmit those electrons requires a high level of voltage, and that requires larger, basically larger wire. And that larger wire is very, very heavy. And because of the weight associated with that wire, you're gonna have to have more robust structures. In addition, because of that voltage, there are basically safety issues that you have with regards to clearance requirements. And so you need more clearance because of that higher voltage. And so that's the reason why these structures are not just robust as far as size, they're also very tall. And so what happens is as that voltage gets reduced, and that's the reason why you see some of these substations that we have in the city, that's where these transmission lines come in, reduce the voltage or lower the voltage so that you can transmit it out on our distribution system. Because it's a lower voltage, you don't have to have as big of a wire. And so the wooden poles that you see when you're driving up and down the streets, those would be our part of our distribution system, which is a lower voltage. Um and then eventually that would get to your house. There's going to be some type of transformer that's going to transform that power to even a lower voltage and which you can then safely enter into your house and and basically power your facilities there or your residence. If we were to have the voltage level that comes from the transmission side straight to your house, it it literally could blow your house up, type of situation. So you want to be able to take that voltage, lower it uh when it's going from the transmission level to the distribution level so you can safely use it at your home.
SPEAKER_02And so the poles that run through the neighborhood and the wires that run through the neighborhoods that bring power to people's houses, that's your distribution system.
SPEAKER_01That is our distribution system.
SPEAKER_03So that sounds just like the interstate highway system and streets, you have big streets for lots of traffic, those interstate highways, the transmission towers, and eventually it steps down to your local neighborhood street then.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. Uh exactly the same type of premise or or concept there.
SPEAKER_03So GPL has been around over a hundred years. We just celebrate our hundred-year anniversary just a couple years ago. Why does Garland have its own electric utility in the first place?
SPEAKER_01So really interesting story. If you go back to uh the 1920s, the city of Garland had just uh dug a new water well. And they had a water pump that was associated with that water well that needed electricity. The which is now, I guess, the precursor to um to Encore, but the local electric utility at that time and the city could not come to an agreement on electric rate. The city of Garland felt like the rates were too high, and so what the city of Garland said is you know what, we will start our own electric utility. So the citizens of Garland went and got a hundred horsepower generator and connected up a distribution system. And if memory serves me correctly, on April the 1st of uh 1923, there were 300 Garland Power and Light customers uh that were energized on that date. And just as a side note, uh April 1st is also my birthday. So, how appropriate, all these years later. Um in fact, I was CEO when we celebrated the 100-year anniversary. I had the privilege of uh being able to help celebrate that.
SPEAKER_03I love that. It all started because we thought costs were too high, and it's like we could do it ourselves. I mean, is there anything more garland than that?
SPEAKER_01That is perfect garland.
SPEAKER_03Yes. So, what makes GPL different from other providers? You mentioned Encore, uh, but we're a municipal-owned utility. What makes us different in that regard?
SPEAKER_01So, so a big difference is uh compared to Encore. Encore is owned by investors, uh, it's a for-profit entity. Uh at the end of the day, the the company, even though it's regulated by the Public Utility Commission, at the end of the day they are reporting to their investors, their shareholders. Garland Power and Light's different. It's it's a not-for-profit, it's owned by the city, it's locally controlled. Ultimately, Garland Power and Light reports up to the City Council, which the city council is elected by the community. And so that's really the difference of what you see is that we're a local control. We're controlled by our customers. Our customers are our shareholders. And so that's really the difference you see between between us and Encore. There's other things where it's a little bit smaller, so we serve a little more concise, um, compact area. We get to be a little more responsive. Uh, we have much more interaction with our uh customers, also just the relationships that we have uh with with council, which council also has relationships with the community. All that just makes it easier from the standpoint of being responsive to what our customers are needing.
SPEAKER_03And you think about you say more responsive, we always have the best customer service. If your power goes out, it seems like we're on it immediately. We're able to sign that I've dealt with Encore, especially in my professional career, and it takes a lot to get them to do anything, and we're even more reliable. It's 99.9, whatever it is, uh, up uh percentage. And you know, if you look at that over a whole year, it's like only being out one hour over the whole year.
SPEAKER_01Correct. No, it's it's a we have a very reliable system just from the nature of how it's constructed. But in addition, because we have a more compact service territory, our crews are able to respond more quickly uh than say a system that is spread out over many, many miles with literally you know hundreds of thousands or millions of customers.
SPEAKER_03So walk us through then what happens if we have a outage event, what happens in our area? How do we deal with something that goes on? We had the, for instance, uh Hurricane Garland we called it back in May of 2024, where we had high force winds that swept through our city really early in the morning, around 5:30 or so in the morning, and it knocked out power to over 35,000 homes. So, how did we respond?
SPEAKER_01So I'll go through a kind of normal outage and then we can talk normal. Then we can talk about the abnormal outage. But a normal kind of outage um given that at this particular point in time um and we are in the process of putting in uh advanced metering infrastructure, or some people know it as smart meters, uh, until those are put into place. Right now we still rely upon our customers to to notify us uh as far as uh if there's an outage at their home or their their business. And so we need them to either call in to our outage number or we need them to text in to let us know that they're without power. So once we know that that customer is without power, then that information will go to our system operations group where they will dispatch either a troubleshooter or they'll dispatch a crew to go out and investigate uh the outage and to see what the cause of the problem is. Sometimes we will know there is an outage if one of our feeders, so I talked about earlier about the distribution system and the poles that you'll see along some of our major thoroughfares, those are typically our feeders. We do have the ability to know that when those feeders are without power, that those customers are also without power, but we still would ask for customers to call in. Uh, anytime we're going out for an outage, we obviously have to investigate what is causing it. So I know people would love to have their power on immediately, uh, but for safety purposes, we have to go out and investigate and check and make sure before we provide power back to their facilities that everything is back in working order, not just for the safety of the equipment of the of the system, but also for the safety of the people, our workers who are out there, uh the citizens who may be out there, but also their property as well. So uh sometimes I know people can be frustrated because again, I especially in the summertime, I want my power back on as fast as possible. But as I mentioned early on, our mention uh with our mission statement that it leads off with safe, and that's our primary focus to make sure we want to get your power back on as quickly as possible, but it will be done safely.
SPEAKER_02So, in an ordinary outage, Daryl, uh you said you want the customers to call. If if more customers call, that does that help you better determine what the likely cause is and where the areas are that you need to send crews to?
SPEAKER_01Yes. Um the the big thing about the more customers calling in, uh we follow the industry standard practice where we uh we first uh approach the outage that has the most number of customers without power. Uh and so if if the more who are calling in, obviously that's gonna show up more customers being without power, and that's gonna start taking precedent uh over a say a smaller outage. Uh just because again, industry practice is to come in and try to restore as many customers as quickly as possible. And so, yes, calling in and letting us know uh is very important as far as the response to your outage. And as far as letting us know, um you know the phone numbers that you can call in, you can call in to 972-205-3000. Or if that number does not work for you, we also have a toll-free number of 833-403-2106. Or if you like to text, you can also text O U T out to 972-205-4000. Now, one of the things we want to make sure is that you have your phone number is aligned with your account, and that will make the process much easier for you. And so if you do have questions, concerns about is my phone number that I'm using to report the outage aligned with my account, you can always call the city's customer service department, and that's 972-205-2671, and they can confirm that for you.
SPEAKER_03You mentioned earlier about uh some uh generation assets. Can we go back to that? Let's what do we have? Do we have power plant? Does Garland do we produce our own power? Do we make enough for our residents? How does that work?
SPEAKER_01So Garland Power and Light has two facilities that generate power. Um we have natural gas-fired units that are at both at Olinger, which is at um Lake Lavon, and at Spencer, which is located in the city of Denton. Uh we do generate power there, but it's a little bit different probably than what people think or have. There's some sometimes there's miss some misconceptions about um the generation of power in ERCOT. Back in the 1990s, when the state of Texas deregulated the um uh the electric market, uh generation uh became basically separated from the transmission and distribution of power. And so even though we have generation that generates power, it does not generate power specifically that goes to the city of Garland. That power actually goes into the grid and supports the grid.
SPEAKER_03So those electrons just run wherever they want on the grid. We can't direct them towards my house in Garland then.
SPEAKER_01That is correct. So uh ERCOT is actually the party that is responsible for making sure that um there is sufficient power that is on the grid. Uh and so ERCOT is what's called a financial market. It's not a physical market. What that means is our generation units, we sell our power into the market, but for our load that we cover as a utility, we have to buy from the market. So our units are actually they they work as a hedge, a financial hedge against market prices, not necessarily to deliver electrons to the city of Garland. So it's a it's a different concept that's out there uh compared to what you might have thought about 30, 40, 50 years ago. Uh with deregulation, now ERCOT is the party that is controlling basically the grid, and they can actually control our units and say, we need you to run your units. We get paid for it, but they can tell us when we need to run, or financially we can run our units if the prices to run them are lower than us buying off of the market.
SPEAKER_02So the the customer at home who gets power, that power could come from a generation facility anywhere in the state of Texas in ERCOT, where they put power onto the grid and then the customer takes it off the grid, and that would happen whether Garland was running its power plant or not.
SPEAKER_00That is correct.
SPEAKER_02And you as Garland Power and Light, you buy that power in bulk to deliver it to the customers at the homes who want it, is that correct?
SPEAKER_00That is correct.
SPEAKER_03Let's talk about that energy bills. I know uh energy bills go up during the summertime. Right now we've had a couple weeks of hundred degree weather. Why does energy users go up so much during the winter, or excuse me, during the summer? And uh what are the biggest factors that it may impact someone's bill?
SPEAKER_01So for some reason, people in Texas, when it gets hot, they want to be cool.
SPEAKER_03Yes. I just got back from Europe for a trip over there, and it definitely was not cool over there. They need to introduce them to air conditioning sometimes.
SPEAKER_01Yes, that and and you just mentioned it. So during the summertime, when it gets hot, we all like to be cool, and so those air conditioning units they're running. And if you look at uh your your electricity bill, typically your uh heating and cooling are gonna make up roughly half of your bill. So that's really your biggest portion. And again, as we get into the summer and uh temperatures get warmer, you're gonna be using more and more of that air conditioning unit, so using more electricity. And even at night now, now that we're roughly around 80 degrees at night, you're still seeing some of these air conditioning room units run all night long to keep those homes cool. And so naturally that's gonna be more electricity use. Since you get charged based upon how much you use, your electricity bill is gonna go up. So the big impact for us right now during the summer is the the air conditioning usage.
SPEAKER_02So when you see people uh on Facebook and other places talking about that their rate went up during the summer, those wouldn't be Garland Power Line customers because the rate stays the same all year round, right?
SPEAKER_01Uh uh actually the rate does switch. We do have seasonal rates, uh, but they they um uh uh twice a year, so there's a switch between um winter type of rates for six months. We call them winter, we'll call them more off season, and then summer type of rates. And but we've had that in place long before uh I was even here at Garland. Uh something that's been in place for probably 20, 25 plus years. But the rates do not go up month by month.
SPEAKER_02I gotcha.
SPEAKER_01Um but we do have a switch that's in the um we'll call it the base rates. There is a small change that happens um uh summer versus basically the off-season time.
SPEAKER_02We don't charge more money when it gets hot out uh because it's hot. The increase people see in their bills is a result of the additional usage.
SPEAKER_01That's correct. It's is the usage is what's driving the the increase in the bills.
SPEAKER_03Let's talk about those rates a little bit because we are a municipal owned power company. You mentioned earlier we're nonprofit, we're able to use some of our revenue to go back into keeping our rates low. And uh I love that GPNL puts out a residential rate chart every month that shows that we're consistently at the low end of the area rates for the Encore service area.
SPEAKER_01Correct. So so every month, um, usually towards the first of the month, we will go out and look at roughly 50 to 60 plans that are by retail electric providers that are in and around the Garland area that are available to consumers that are in the deregulated area. And what we compare against is the typically is the 12-month plans, because one of the things we mentioned in the mission statement is stable rates. Go back many, many years ago, Garland Power and Light, we did adjust our rates on a monthly basis. And what we found is that customers preferred the consistency. They would rather have a stable rate than it adjusting up. In particular in the summer, when rates normally would go up, the cost of power would go up, your usage is going up, so the bills became even larger. People didn't like that. So they like the stable rate. And so we can usually compare against a 12-month plan that's out there. And you go back for uh we should have the information back there for several years, but you can see that we typically are in the bottom quarter, bottom third. Um, this past month, uh we were, well, I guess this month, July 1st, we were sick number six out of the roughly 50 to 60 plans as far as the lowest cost. Uh we're we've been running around a little over two cents a kilowatt hour less than what the average is. And so for average residential user user in Garland, uh, you know, that's roughly $25 a month. So that's you know, $25 a month, $300 a year. That's that's some good good savings there.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I know I live in Garland, but I live in an Encourse service area. And the cheapest plan that I could find at the time I bought my plan was two cents more than than what Garland Power and Light was charging. And made me wish I said not only would I have the reliability, but I could save two cents uh a kilowatt hour if I could move my house a few hundred yards into a garland service area. So I think a lot of people don't realize if they haven't been on the rate pages. Uh if you go on the rate pages and look uh for the areas in read immediately next to us in Garland and in the in the suburbs around us, you'll see that the pricing is is uh typically higher than what y'all charge.
SPEAKER_00Correct.
SPEAKER_03Well, we talk about bills a little bit. Do you have any tips for us to help lower our energy costs? Someone at home, should I turn off my AC every time I leave the house?
SPEAKER_01Or so we do have some tips, some some basic tips. Um, and if you want more tips beyond what I talk about, you can go to our website. That's gpl texas t-e-x-a-s.org. And we have a long list of tips that are out there, but I'll go through a few, kind of the basics. Some of these may not be popular. They they probably would not be popular at my house. They'd be popular with me, but maybe not at everybody in my house. Uh the first is the recommendation to set your thermostat during the summer at 78 degrees. I see looks on people's faces. 78 degrees. Now, the for every degree cooler that you want your house beyond that 78 degrees, typically you're looking at six to eight percent increase in electricity usage. So just kind of put that wow, put that in mind. You can wear shorts and a t-shirt. Um during the winter, 68 degrees. You can put on a sweater, maybe a jacket. But if you're looking to save money, those are a couple of the recommendations that are out there as far as some good guidelines to try to save money with regards to where you set your thermostat. Uh another thing to do is a fan. So whether that's a ceiling fan or a fan that you might have on the floor, a fan directly blowing on you can lower your body temper or your temperature in that where you're setting by about four degrees. And so you'll feel cooler, even though it may not be cooler in the house, you will feel cooler. And running the fan is cheaper than running your AC unit.
SPEAKER_02So keep it at 78 and turn the fan on. Yes. In the summertime.
SPEAKER_01Yes. Yes.
SPEAKER_03I'm a big fan of fans. My wife makes fun of me because my family, we have a fan where I grew up in every every room of the house, including the bathroom, which I love because I love having a fan on you at all the time. And she's the one who gets cold, and she's I think I left the house earlier and she was wearing a hoodie. I mean, yes, and we don't keep our house that cold, but uh we also have an energy saver program. Can you tell us about that?
SPEAKER_01Sure. We we have again you can go to our website and find this information, but we do have an energy saver program where um there's opportunities to receive bill credits if you go and install uh qualifying uh new AC units or heating units. Uh in addition, we also have um uh a whole house weatherization uh program that you can also receive credits for. Uh these would be things for like uh again, things that qualify would be have to be energy efficient, but uh new windows, new doors, uh ceiling insulation, uh even things such as uh going in and caulking, uh those type of things that you can go in and uh we do offer uh bill credits uh again if it it meets the approval requirements, and so there's requirements that are laid out on our website, and but if you're interested, I would encourage you to go and look at that. Uh we also offer uh home energy audits. So we'll have somebody there from from the city that will come in and look to see what are some ways that you can do to improve energy efficiency in your home. Uh so that's another thing that you can take into uh to account and try to reduce that reduce that utility bill.
SPEAKER_03I must say I I've done both of those. I've had someone come over to my house and walk through and look in the attic and look at my insulation, and and then when we got new windows installed, we were able to take advantage of the energy saver program and actually get a credit almost equivalent to almost two months worth of electricity bills that was amazing to not have a bill, although we had to pay for the windows, of course. But we just went through the process and filled it out and it was great to see that credit on our bill.
SPEAKER_02So with these programs, not only does the person wind up with a lower bill because they have a more efficient air conditioner or more airtight house to keep their uh bills down, but they also get a credit on their bill towards their electric consumption.
SPEAKER_01That is correct.
SPEAKER_02Wow, that's amazing.
SPEAKER_01Yes. Not many places you will find that.
SPEAKER_02I don't they don't offer that on my plan. No.
SPEAKER_03I want to talk a little bit about that extreme event that we had, especially I know during my time on council we've had really two that I can remember that were extreme events. One was what we called Hurricane Garland in May of 2024, and he also had a little thing called uh uh Uri Ice Storm where it came through. I know you you just shivered at the mention of that there, but that was quite an event where temperatures went down to six degrees for several days here in Garland and and really stressed us and tested us. Can you talk us through those two events?
SPEAKER_01Man, you're gonna make me go back and relive.
SPEAKER_03I know, I know.
SPEAKER_01So I thought my hair was gray. It's gonna keep going gray. So uh we'll we'll talk a little bit about Uri. Um in fact, um Mr. Betts and myself had had a had a long experience with uh winter storm URI. Uh but um you know it anybody who who could say they saw something like that coming, at least from the electric uh utility industry, I I would strongly question what they're saying. But um how does such you know you use that term perfect storm? It's kind of that situation of perfect storm. Um I don't think any of us ever thought that you would have uh the the water intake for generation facilities down in South Texas freezing up uh just because you just don't see that level of of of cold.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I grew up in Corpus and there were some winters where it never got below freezing, but it was below freezing for several days down there as well.
SPEAKER_01Yes, and so that that's really the what's unique about Uri was not just how cold it was up here, because sometimes we we will get that cold. It was how deep it went into the state of Texas. And so it went so deep, went down into the southern part of the state, and those facilities um weren't as used to that type of cold weather, and so we were losing generation facilities that you normally wouldn't see that situation. Um had issues on the natural gas system with regards to um uh supply freezing up, and again, natural gas is supplying you know from a generation standpoint uh for the power. Uh so you had had a lot of unique situations that were happening at that particular point in time. Now, I will point out that uh we had two of our units available during Winterstorm Uri, and both those units ran the entire time. Um so a testament to our folks, uh we had done uh weatherization uh out at our facilities, and so uh they ran throughout the entire process. So uh again, kudos to our our folks for for being there. Uh the industry learned a lot of lessons. Speaking of weatherization, those are now requirements. There are audits done by uh the state to go in and look at make sure, not just from a winter perspective, but also from a summer perspective, that your facilities are prepared. Uh, we routinely get audited by uh by the state on our facilities, and I'll say we've we've we pass glowingly uh when they come in and look at our facilities. And in fact, one of our facilities was mentioned that you know, could we use you as an example uh to other utilities? Um and so that's uh again the the the pride that our folks take in in um Garland Power and Light. Um some of the lessons that we learned internally um really from a load shed standpoint, um we instituted now an automated system uh because we were having to do manual uh load shed in some situations, and you can imagine trying to manually shed load at stations. Tell us what that is. What is load shedding? So load shedding is when uh you have a requirement to reduce load basically to save the system.
SPEAKER_02Um and so in When you say reduce load, you mean turn electricity off.
SPEAKER_01Turn electricity law, yes. Some customers will will will have to lose power. But um the reason why that's done is for protection of the grid. Uh because if you don't do that, because of just the the the requirements associated with with keeping the uh proper frequency in place, uh if that frequency is not maintained, that you will have a blackout. And so ERCOT uh instituted the load sheds and required all the utilities to reduce customers' load, that means cut people off with um so they didn't have power to ultimately save save the grid so it didn't have a full complete blackout. So that some people, yes, did have electricity, but it's a better situation of some people having electricity than none of us in ERCOT having not having any electricity.
SPEAKER_02So so when the winter storm Uri happened, the power outages that people experienced in Garland were mostly because the state told us we had to turn power off to some customers, is that correct?
SPEAKER_01Yes. Uh we we we were directed, the utilities were directed by ERCOT, and we have that obligation to um to follow their orders because they are the con at the end of the day, we may own the assets, but they control the grid, and so uh we have to follow those orders. Because if you think if one utility decides not to follow the orders, and then you've got a whole nother situation with regards to potentially um affecting everybody on the grid.
SPEAKER_02But we didn't have many customers who are out because of the snow and the ice that occurred. Most of the customers who are out were out as a result of Urcott telling us we had to turn certain customers off.
SPEAKER_00That is correct.
SPEAKER_03One thing I know we learned from that too, also, is we've added more breakers into the system to make sure we can be more uh discerning about how we turn off and on people and and rotate those around.
SPEAKER_01And and and the big thing is that that automation that we put in place so that it will it will have that automatic rotation uh throughout the system. Uh, because again, if you can think if you're having to go out in Winterstorm Uri and do do manual type of um of switching out of load, it it's quite cumbersome, um, quite difficult, and so to have an automated process put in place that that um uh hopefully we'll never have to um see how well the automation works, that would be our hope. But the automation being put in place uh should make it where we can rotate the outages more um, I'd call it more cleanly through our system.
SPEAKER_03So tell us then about the future. What does a future GPL hold? Is it more transmission like we already have already? Is it more generation? What does the future GP ⁇ L look like?
SPEAKER_01So so from let's uh we'll look at the city of Garland itself because of of the the retail side, which is the the Garland uh power and light uh cut in in-use customers. Uh we're effectively built out. We have we have smaller levels of growth uh in our system. Uh you'll probably see some on the distribution side. Uh you know, there may be some additional areas where we might add a larger transformer to serve some areas as we I I would say that um uh we kind of reshape our system to match where some load growths are happening. And so you may see some uh some more transformers in certain areas to to help provide additional reliability. Uh I don't see uh wide-scale distribution growth in our system just because of being basically built out. On the transmission side, um there will be additional transmission improvements. Uh it gets back to the the load growth that is expected in the uh in the Dallas area. As you mentioned earlier, this is kind of like a uh highway system, almost like the interstate highway with the transmission. Uh take Interstate 30. Uh people may be traveling through Garland and not live in Garland, but Interstate 30 had to be increased. It's the same with the electrons. We have electrons that flow through the Garland Power and Light system that may not serve inside the city of Garland, but they're serving in the areas around it. We have an obligation to provide that service. That's a requirement we have. And so as growth continues, load growth continues to happen in and around the Garland area, uh, you'll see us where we're having to increase the capacity on our transmission system. And we've got some of those projects that have been going underway for the past oh four or five years, and then some of these projects will be going on ongoing for the next four or five years uh in the city as you see us upgrading the capacity associated with our transmission system.
SPEAKER_02So we have to build transmission even for just electrons that are just passing through. They're not stopping here in Garland, they're just heading to some other city. If the state tells us we have to build power lines to pass those electrons through, that's what we have to do.
SPEAKER_01Yes, because i if we if we don't, if we say no, we're not going to build that. There's certain something called a certificate of a convenience necessity. In the industry we call it a CCN, that gives you the right to serve your area, but it also is an obligation to serve your area. So if you're not willing to live up to that obligation, uh the state will find somebody who is willing to live up to that obligation and they will construct that transmission.
SPEAKER_03So that the electrons can be passing through.
SPEAKER_01That is correct.
SPEAKER_03Well, the good thing though is we do get a return on those transmission assets. That's correct.
SPEAKER_01That is correct. We we we we pursued transmission investment. That's the reason why we have transmission in in West Texas, down close to Houston, and as I mentioned, in the northern portion uh of the area. We pursue transmission as a growth opportunity because uh not only do we get the money back from um from our investment dollar for dollar that we get back, we get a return on top of that. And so that return uh we get to utilize that to help offset the cost um to our ratepayers because that transmission cost is spread out across all the ratepayers in ERCOT. So we only pick up a little small portion, less than less than one percent of those costs we pick up, but we get back the return that well exceeds uh that small that small cost that we incur.
SPEAKER_02So by doing these transmission projects, even if they're outside of Garland, that helps keep our rates low and stable.
SPEAKER_00That is correct.
SPEAKER_03That's wonderful. I'd love to hear that. Hurricane Garland, when it happened, I was up early that morning. I like to work out early in the morning, it's the only time I can with kids and a job and everything else, but it came rolling through at about 5 30 in the morning and gusts blowing and everything, and all of a sudden the power goes out. So it was a big traumatic event for the city, and I'm sure GPNL, it was for them as well.
SPEAKER_01So, uh, and I think I'd mention this that we know when a feeder, one of our distribution feeders, uh is without power. And I get a notification whenever that happens. And so early that morning I got up because of of you could tell the the weather had dramatically changed. And I was watching it, and I was going, man, it is it's really rough out there. I I hope I hope we don't have you know a large outage. And all of a sudden I I get a notification that we have a feeder out.
SPEAKER_03Famous last word, yeah.
SPEAKER_01And then I get a notification we have another feeder out. And then a notification we have and it just they continued to just my my phone is blowing up with these notifications that feeders are keep going out. And um one of our employees that uh I I think he's been with uh with GPNL for 30 plus, maybe close to 40 years, um texted and said, I've never seen anything like this. This is bad. And I'm thinking, if he and he's the type of person that's a straight shooter. He he's not gonna, you know, if he says it's it's the worst, it's the bad, it's you know, it's bad. And um sure enough, at our peak, uh we had almost half of our customers without power. Um but amazing testament to to our folks that you know in a 24-hour period, I I'd have to go back and look, but I I think it was something um something that maybe around 10% of our customers were maybe without power by the by the end of the 24 hours. It was um basically it was all hands-on deck. We had all the crews, all the engineers, anybody that that had any type of field experience was out what we call riding lines. And so they're riding the feeders and checking to see, okay, is the feeder damaged? Can we re-energize it? And um which ones can we get to the the the quickest? And so it it literally was all hands on deck, and so within that short period of time, uh, we had a uh a massive reduction in the number of outage outages. But uh then I think as I presented to the council, I said, and then we hit the wall, and that's when you really start going in, and it's these difficult situations where you've got you know huge trees uh that have taken down the lines, and sometimes they're in places where you can't get uh easily get equipment in. Uh, we we were having employees who are having to go, uh we'll call it old school, manually, you know, go up and and physically climb the pole, not not you know, using a bucket truck, or having to carry poles manually um back to the areas.
SPEAKER_03They just couldn't get there with the down trees and stuff.
SPEAKER_01Couldn't get there. And and we had vegetation crews uh working, you know, throughout this event, um called in vegetation crews from different places uh to come help. We had um quite a bit of assistance from other municipal electric utilities uh from around the state uh that came in to help us. And uh some of the ones that came in had been uh had done disaster relief. before and said this is as bad as you know some of the hurricanes that they have been a part of in Florida you know as far as the um outage restorations and um you know really can't say enough about those those folks who came who came to help and uh get the power restored but it was it was a a very lengthy process and by the end uh you were literally restoring power you know one home at a time and if you think about it how you know we had several hundred that we were having to do that and you just start doing the math of of of you just can only have so many people out there working and having to go in you know one at a time at some of these homes and restore the uh restore the power but it it was um it it was a character building experience and and one that um I I I hope that I hope I don't ever have to uh go through again.
SPEAKER_02And a lot of residents don't realize sometimes you have a power crew who's out ready to restore power but you've got to get the trees out of the way first and the debris I mean until the debris out of the way then you can actually get in there and that sometimes in some of these single outages is half the battle right?
SPEAKER_01Well yes and and if you think about from a vegetation standpoint I believe um uh the landfill had mentioned that uh and Sanitation had mentioned also that if you took the uh two tornado events that we had that uh you know significantly affected the city and took all the debris associated with those two events it still was less than this event um and so it it was if I remember 95 plus mile an hour winds uh as far as the gust and so when we say hurricane garland literally the winds were hurricane strength and when I was driving through some of the sections of town because I I had been a part of some um uh hurricane uh cleanup efforts um back in the that been back in the 2000s uh that's what I thought I was driving around said oh my lands this looks like some of the hurricane damage that uh that I'd seen in Florida.
SPEAKER_02Yeah it was really hard to believe. I mean if you if you didn't go drive around and see it for yourself. You know, because there were parts of North Texas that experienced nothing that day. And then in in Garland we had wide areas with just trees everywhere and just the the thought of some of the you can't even get past some of the streets never mind to get to the power poles. You've got to get the trees the trees cleared out of the streets and then I I just can't imagine what a big operation that was and your team uh performed spectacularly getting everybody back on as quickly as they did.
SPEAKER_03They did and we were happy to recognize them after the fact on city council and uh really appreciate all the hard work that they had during that event and really every event any good weather or bad weather they really come through for us.
SPEAKER_01Yeah and we we appreciate the the council's support um obviously that was a very dick difficult time for council in particular the for the districts that were that were hardest hit and you know the the these type of events can either bring out the best or the worst and we had a combination there there was best and worst and but I I was so thankful for the support that the uh council provided and also just seeing how the community came together and you know supporting supporting each other uh during that event well we have a few residents questions here I'd love to ask you uh we mentioned a little bit about how GPNL rates compare to other electric providers and mentioned that we have a monthly chart that we show but why doesn't GPNL offer programs like free nights and weekends that the other providers promote well uh I would say there's there's from a from a power supply standpoint and delivering power at the end of the day there's nothing truly free so the poles and wires that it takes to get the the electrons to your house even though you may not give be getting charged for those electrons there's cost associated with it and so that cost is going to get picked up somewhere um and typically where it's gonna be picked up is those hours that they are charging you for. Or somebody else is going to have to pick it up and so it's really at the end of the day I I it's a little bit of a misnomer of free. The other thing to to to look at and this is not this is not me this is not Garland Power and Light that that's coming up with this but there are third parties that go in and and look at some of these various plans to try to give people advice on what are what are the best plans to look for. And one of the worst plans that you can pick according to these these people who go and analyze this are one of these free well free nights free weekends and and I guess I I look at it from the standpoint of if I owned a business what would I be promoting? Would I be promoting the a program that doesn't make me much money or a program that makes me a lot of money and so if I see ads for something a lot of ads for a particular item my gut feel is I'm gonna be thinking somebody's making a lot of money off of something or they wouldn't be spending all this money on the on the ads for this type of program. And so again I would encourage people who I because I do I do hear oh I would you know I want the free nights free weekends and and I would encourage people do a little bit of research and see what some of these third party uh experts have to say about uh some of these programs you know um you know as far as their true cost.
SPEAKER_03And I if you look at our July chart we put out some of those free nights weekends are among the highest on that chart I'd you can just we'll do the research for you.
SPEAKER_02Now we also we do offer a a green rate though right so for people who are environmentally conscious who want to use renewable power we will sell uh a renewable power product for uh a different rate than you just select that that is correct and they can go to uh either our website or they can contact the um uh city's customer service department and get more information as far as our green rate what about other electric providers I mean people complain why do I have to use GPL it's a monopoly I want to have a choice for what power company I get to use.
SPEAKER_01Again why is GPL the only provider for about 80 85% of our city so it it it goes back to again the founding of of Garland Power and Light as a municipally owned electric utility since it's municipally owned when the state moved to deregulation they gave the municipally owned electric utilities and the electric cooperatives the option of whether or not to to opt in to competition and there's 72 municipally owned electric utilities and I only know of one and that was Lubbock here recently um well maybe about five years ago that went into competition um but the reason why they went into competition is because they wanted to get into the ERCOT market and that was they were a part of a different um they were not part of our ERCOT and so they wanted to be part of ERCOT and that was part of the agreement when they were coming over was for deregulation and then many many years ago there was a uh if I remember correctly there was an electric cooperative but um uh most you municipal utilities they look at the situation and they see exactly kind of what we see with regards to the rates and I sometimes I joke about yeah I want you want choice you want the choice to pay more um uh but that's the reason why municipal electric utilities haven't really gone down that path is they start to look at it from the standpoint of uh the local control um uh uh the the lower rates the benefits that the uh utility provide overall to the city and um so the the there hasn't been that decision by all these other 71 other municipal electric utilities to move into competition it's not uncommon I mean it includes some big cities like Austin and San Antonio and Denton are municipal owned electric utilities that is correct are there any assistant programs available for residents who may be struggling with high bills I know it's summertime you may see some higher bills coming in what can we do for the citizens who might need some help paying their bills so the city does offer um uh assistance uh this would be available through the um the uh city's customer service department um you can either go to the city's website uh to access that information or you can go to the GPNL uh website at GPNL TexasTEXAS dot org and we also have a link to that site on the customer service department uh where you can um there's an application process that you go through a qualification um but um there is uh there is support assistance that's available to customers that may be struggling you know during this time that's great we always want to make sure all our citizens are taken care of and uh really appreciate having a program like that in place so we can make sure that uh we can get those bills paid so just reach out to your customer service representatives well Daryl thank you for joining us and providing insight into how Garland Power and light serves the community and helps keep our residents powered on year round remember that reliable locally controlled and inexpensive power is a critical part of how Garland delivers for our residents and especially during the most demanding and hottest times of the year you can check out GPL's website gpltexas.org for energy saving tips track your uses stay informed and remember that new episodes of Fifth and State come out every first Monday of the month you can listen on Apple Podcasts Spotify or YouTube leave us a comment give us a five star recommendation and hopefully share it with a friend.
SPEAKER_03I'm Mayor Dylan Hendrick saying goodnight garland