CPS Energy generated an extra $46.1 million in city revenue this year after the utility was able to successfully sell off excess power to the Texas grid, according to a City Council presentation Tuesday.

That burgeoning form of revenue has been a boon to the city budget in past years, since the City of San Antonio owns the utility and shares in its profits.

This year, however, much of the money is supposed to go toward reliability projects at the utility, aimed at lessening future rate increases.

Under new policies set by the city council earlier this year, the city will give about $25.9 million back to CPS Energy, said the city’s Chief Financial Officer Ben Gorzell on Tuesday.

The city will keep about $10.2 million to balance its budget, plus another $10 million for future allocation, as agreed to in the new plan.

Tuesday’s presentation comes after the city faced a budget deficit this year, and City Council’s resulting pared-down budget left little room for council members’ pet projects.

CPS Energy laid out its plans for what its reinvestment program will look like.

The $25.9 million will be used for reliability projects including power plant investments and more reclosers, said CPS Energy’s Chief Financial Officer Cory Kuchinsky.

A recloser is an automatic electrical device used in power distribution systems to protect electrical circuits from temporary faults. Used in overhead power lines to detect faults, it will automatically disconnect the affected section of the circuit. A recloser will then attempt to restore service after a fault is cleared, reducing downtime and improving the reliability of the electrical supply.

“We’ve installed over 130 per year since fiscal year ’21 and we still have a significant portion of our service territory to get through — at least double what we’ve done already,” Kuchinsky said. “This investment … has a really significant impact in minimizing the number of customers that are out during an outage and the duration in which they are out.”

As for the plant investments, they’re greatly needed, Kuchinsky said. He added that for the last couple of years “we’ve been running them harder than we had planned” due to the extreme heat in the summers. Additional one-time funding could help ensure more reliability, Kuchinsky said.

“We think these two proposed projects represent the spirit that was envisioned in the memorandum of understanding and directly supports the stated goal in that MOU of supporting the resiliency and reliability of the system for the customer’s benefit,” he said.

Andrea Drusch contributed to this report.

Clarification: This story has been updated to clarify that CPS Energy’s off-system sales generated $46.1 in city revenue, not total revenue, this year.