As Houston and the surrounding area await power restoration and begin recovery from Hurricane Beryl, many CenterPoint customers are questioning what went wrong and why communication from the electricity distributor has fallen short of expectations.
“To give you an idea of what we’re looking at CenterPoint Energy, we have 5,000 square miles to verify, once we get that information we’ll be able to assess exactly what we have,” A spokesperson for CenterPoint told Houston City Council members on Wednesday that their assessment would likely be done before the end of the day but that some customers could still be waiting days for their power to be restored.
Council members launched into a barrage of questions about the organization’s readiness ahead of Beryl. Councilmember Ed Pollard, whose district includes Gulfton, pushed CenterPoint on why there were reports that they didn’t have additional crews on standby ready to begin working once the storm moved through the region.
“As the fourth largest city in America, which is the energy capital of the world, there has to be something we can learn from this to have quicker and faster response times and something we can take to the state,” he said.
CenterPoint said they’ve worked with the legislature and the Public Utility Commission, with whom they recently filed a resiliency plan, to harden their infrastructure and increase vegetation management, which is understood to be one of the main causes of this storm’s outages. CenterPoint’s resiliency plan would require a $2.2 billion investment to enact and includes items like transitioning to manufactured poles which are more expensive but stronger, identifying critical circuits, and increasing maintenance and management for “critical customers.”
The council also pointed out CenterPoint’s call lines, which were not working, reports of crews sitting in parking lots awaiting instruction, and the removal of CenterPoint’s outage tracker that allows customers to see where power is currently interrupted and when it is restored.
“I understand that we had a hurricane, but this was a Category 1, Ike was close to sixteen years ago… now CenterPoint is submitting resilience plans,” said Councilmember Abbie Kamin. “We should have never been in this place to begin with with a Category 1 seeing the widespread outages that we are,” she continued, “I look forward to more conversation but for Houstonians who are sitting in their homes right now this is unacceptable.”
Many have focused on CenterPoint’s tree trimming and vegetation management efforts, or lack thereof, near electric lines and poles. They’ve been criticized for failing to maintain the vegetation throughout the year, especially before storms, leading to fallen vegetation knocking out transmission and electric lines. CenterPoint said they spend millions annually on their existing tree trimming program but hope to ramp it up after implementing their resiliency plan.
More questions were left than answers, and in recent days, local officials have increasingly called for more accountability from CenterPoint.
During and after the meeting, Mayor John Whitmire demanded that CenterPoint do better, while Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said at a press conference that he would be assessing CenterPoint’s performance once a full report of their preparation is received. Harris County Attorney Christian Menefee stated, “Centerpoint is failing to keep its customers informed after Hurricane Beryl….During massive outages, & w/ more expected this hurricane season, we need confidence in their readiness and clear info as we navigate power loss in extreme heat.”
