Aging energy infrastructure is an issue for the energy industry in states around the country, and Texas is no exception.

On June 16, 2025, Houston-based CenterPoint Energy announced it is sending temporary emergency generation units to San Antonio. The units, each of which has a generating capacity between 27 megawatts (MW) and 32 MW, will be shipped from Houston, where they are currently deployed.

The shipment is a result of an agreement between CenterPoint, the state’s transmission operator, ERCOT, and other stakeholders, signed on June 4. The agreement calls for CenterPoint to ship a total of 15 units in three separate waves. The first shipment will include five units. All the units will remain in San Antonio for up to two years.

The temporary units will help ERCOT fill the void left by the retirement of three aging gas-powered facilities at the V.H. Brauning Power Plant. Those facilities, built in the 1960s, were scheduled to be mothballed in March 2025.

Because of the need to replace the capacity lost by retiring these facilities, ERCOT had issued a request for proposed alternatives to a reliability must-run agreement, which would have kept the plants open and running past their scheduled retirement date.

The temporary generators are celebrated as a more cost-effective solution. According to CenterPoint, they will deliver approximately $200 million of value to the state’s grid. Removing them from the Houston market will lower bills for Houston-area customers by approximately $2 per month. Each unit provides enough power for approximately 30,000 homes. Also, as part of the agreement, CenterPoint will not be taking any revenue or profit from the deployment of the units in San Antonio.

CenterPoint started acquiring the units in 2021, and took some criticism when they were not fully deployed during power outages caused by Hurricane Beryl in 2024.

Header image: Image by Ray_Shrewsberry from Pixabay