When Gina Mason moved into her apartment at Avistar on the Boulevard, the thermostat was so old she could never tell what temperature it was set at.
“It was a big guessing game,” Mason said.
She moved from California to San Antonio around September 2024. Her first few months were “a nightmare,” she said, as she tried to adjust to the Texas heat with an outdated thermostat in a building with faulty insulation. Her air conditioner couldn’t keep up.
That is until the Northwest Side apartment complex was weatherized through CPS Energy’s Casa Verde program. A new thermostat was installed, and her attic was insulated better. Some air-conditioning units in her complex were serviced, but hers was fine.
This year, even during the sweltering summer, Mason didn’t sweat. “I didn’t even realize I was in menopause because the heat hasn’t been affecting me so bad.”
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“A couple times, I got cold in the summer,” Mason said.
Her bills for her two-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment dropped along with the temperature – despite living in an upstairs unit “where we get everybody’s heat,” she said.
Mason said that last year, her bill was “getting too close to $200.” Last month, it was around $120.
Apartment manager Erika Alcoser points out the door seals that were installed as part of weatherization efforts in a vacant unit at the Wurzbach Manor Apartments. The work was done through Casa Verde’s pilot program that focused on apartment units. (Blaine Young/Blaine Young for the San Antonio)
CPS began weatherizing homes in 2008 through its Casa Verde program. The program traditionally focused on servicing single-family homes, as well as commercial and industrial units.
In 2022, CPS invested $350 million on the Sustainable Tomorrow Energy Plan. The goal was to reduce emissions and eliminate barriers to its programs, such as Casa Verde, while harnessing innovation and demand management to create energy savings – and to cut customers’ bills.
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The utility celebrated the weatherization of 30,000 homes in 2023. The program’s success spurred the utility to find ways to expand its services to a group of customers that wasn’t able to tap those energy-saving incentives – apartment residents, said Jonathan Tijerina, VP of corporate development.
“Three years ago, the feedback from our community, our elected officials, our stakeholders was very clear – we needed to make sure we were offering programs that could reach a wide range of our community,” Tijerina said.
That led to the creation of a pilot program specifically targeting apartment residents.
This year, 856 apartments have been weatherized through the CPS program, with more than 5,000 units waiting for service in the pipeline. The utility’s goal is to weatherize 16,000 homes and 20,000 multifamily units by the end of July 2027, Tijerina said.
Apartment manager Erika Alcoser points out the new digital thermostat in her unit that was installed as part of the weatherization efforts at the Wurzbach Manor Apartments. This year, 856 apartments have been weatherized through CPS’ Casa Verde program. (Blaine Young/Blaine Young for the San Antonio)
Weatherizing an apartment can be as simple as changing the lighting to power-reducing LED bulbs or adding Wi-Fi thermostats to a home. In certain apartments, it can include attic installations and air-conditioning tune-ups.
“This translates, on average, to probably around $150 to $180 range in customer savings per year, per unit,” Tijerina said.
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CPS collaborates with eight local trade groups who work with management teams to offer weatherization services. The trade groups negotiate with the property management team to come up with a price based on the work being done and the CPS rebate available. CPS’ role is to help facilitate the process.
Tijerina said the utility has paid $600,000 in incentives for the work done so far this year, which comes out to about $700 per unit. He explained that how much it costs to weatherize an apartment varies, depending on what needs to be done to make the apartment more energy efficient.
The apartment program so far has produced an energy savings of about two-thirds of a megawatt, enough to power 166 homes during peak energy usage.
For Erika Alcoser, a resident and property manager of Wurzbach Apartments, the weatherization has helped the property regulate residents’ energy usage.
Apartment manager Erika Alcoser poses for a photo in front of Wurzbach Manor Apartments, which took part in the Casa Verde program to make its units more energy efficient. (Blaine Young/Blaine Young for the San Antonio)
“There’s a language barrier,” Alcoser said. “A lot of my tenants don’t speak English, that’s not their first language. A lot of them were compromising or messing up our thermostats.”
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With the new smart thermostats, the temperature cannot drop below 70 degrees, Alcoser said.
The work done through the program has her apartment “feel a little cooler” even though the complex’s energy usage has gone down, she said.
Tijerina sees the weatherization program as the foot in the door for properties to invest in more energy-saving programs and initiatives.
“When you talk about weatherization in particular, that really is the first big step in working towards all the additional measures that you may want to do in the future,” Tijerina said. “It doesn’t make sense to put a brand-new A/C unit on a building if you still have air leaks.”
Every unit weatherized takes the utility one more step toward its goal of reducing energy demand by 410 megawatts, enough to power 102,500 homes, by the end of July 2027.
Mason already is reaping the program’s benefits with a more comfortable apartment and lower bills.
“I can’t wait to see how it does in winter,” Mason said.
This article originally published at CPS expands its energy-savings program to include apartment residents.