On Tuesday, Austin Energy announced a plan that could reshape the city’s electric infrastructure, pledging $735 million over the next decade to make the grid more reliable.
The Plan
Austin Energy’s Electric System Resiliency Plan (ESRP) follows more than a year of stakeholder conversations, cost reviews, and third-party studies of its overhead and underground distribution system. The utility says the plan will deliver $735 million in system improvements.
What the Money Will Cover
The 10-year cost estimate breaks down into:
- $340 million for vegetation and wildfire management
- $280 million for “circuit hardening, pole inspection, sectionalization and automation”
- $115 million for “intelligent systems, grid analytics” and a dashboard that shows progress
In the immediate fiscal-year budget, Austin Energy has $60 million earmarked for the ESRP. In FY 2026 the utility will prioritize:
- Replacing existing overhead lines with more robust equipment and better technology-circuit hardening-across 10 circuits
- Beginning wildfire-specific circuit hardening in 10 high-wildfire-risk areas
- Replacing “40 segments” of underground cable
- Installing automatic switches (reclosers) that detect problems, briefly cut power to clear temporary issues, and then automatically reclose to restore service; the goal is 30 main-line reclosers and 100 lateral reclosers
- Conducting circuit-optimization studies, inspecting roughly 8,000 poles, and performing additional vegetation management
Leadership Perspective
General Manager Stuart Reilly said the local grid is “at least twice as reliable” as the rest of Texas, but “there’s always room for improvement.” “Austin Energy’s resiliency efforts will go toward building an even more reliable electric system for our community,” he added.
Vice President of Electric System Engineering and Technical Services David Tomczyszyn noted that “Three of our worst events that we’ve had at Austin Energy have been in the last five years. And so with that is … we needed a plan to get ahead of that.” He also said, “This year will be really about building that foundation, building dashboards so that we have transparency to our customers of how we’re doing.” “Next year, 2027, we’ll be ramping up,” Tomczyszyn said.
Key Takeaways
- A $735 million plan will span a decade, aiming to reduce outages and improve reliability
- Vegetation management, circuit hardening, and new analytics tools form the core of the investment
- The first fiscal year will focus on establishing dashboards and prioritizing critical upgrades
Austin Energy says ESRP expenses will be included in annual budgets for the next ten years. The plan follows two major winter storms in 2021 and 2023 and a microburst earlier this year, underscoring the urgency of stronger infrastructure.
