FORT HOOD, TX — Electric bills for many across Central Texas skyrocketed after the devastating winter storm last month. Fort Hood was no exception.
The post received a massive electricity bill of more than $35 million.
“We’re scrambling with the Army to figure out how to pay that bill, and it is significant,” said Fort Hood Public Works Director Brian Dosa.
Dosa says in a normal February, they pay about $1.5 million to keep the lights on. He says the spike in price is due to the state trying to reduce the demand on electrical grids during the storm.
“They raised the cost of electricity from a typical five to 10 cents a kilowatt hour up to, at times, $9 kilowatt hour,” Dosa explained.
The staggering bill is higher than their entire 2020 electric cost of around $25 million.
Dosa says the bill and the damage to the post could've been even worse. Thankfully, more than half of their electricity comes from 65,000 solar panels and 22 wind turbines.
“The cost of storm damage to facilities on Fort Hood, it’s going to be around $15 million,” said Dosa. “If we would’ve lost electricity, that would’ve been doubled easily. We would of had more water breaks and even more important than that, we would of had potential impacts to mission.”
Dosa says Fort Hood had 1,200 waterline breaks and received water damage to more than 100 buildings.
He says the post was able to keep their lights on throughout the storm, and they won’t ask any of their soldiers or families to help pay the hefty price.
