In February 2021, Winter Storm Uri created region-wide energy shortages, driving natural gas and electricity prices on open markets to record high prices. As a result, Evergy’s overall cost to supply energy to customers, resolve outages, repair infrastructure and pay for staffing overtime far exceeded its normal budgeted costs.

Along with the Southwest Power Pool (which manages the electric grid and wholesale power market for the much of the central United States), Evergy since implemented changes to improve reliability and reduce the risk of future storm-related impacts, including increased on-site fuel storage at some of our power plants.

Evergy worked closely with our state regulators in Kansas and Missouri to manage the financial impact of Uri on our customers. In fact, customers of electric utilities in other Uri-affected states will likely have larger per-customer recovery costs than Evergy customers.