CenterPoint Energy failed during Hurricane Beryl, but who will hold them accountable?

Houston Chronicle ^ | 7/12/2024 | Chris Tomlinson

[Zhang Fei]

CenterPoint is a $19 billion, for-profit corporation granted a monopoly over a hundred years ago to manage and maintain the transmission and distribution of electricity across the Houston region. This regulated utility failed to deliver power to 85% of its customers during the height of a mild hurricane.

In a perfect world, the Public Utility Commission would have ensured CenterPoint maintained a grid resilient enough to withstand a stronger storm. Instead, elected officials are asking the wrong questions about the emergency response.

“I’ll tell you whether I’m satisfied or not when I have a full report of where their crews were, when they were asked to come in and how quickly they get power back. That will be the tale of the tape.” Patrick said earlier this week.

Wrong. The important question is, why did so many CenterPoint powerlines and poles snap so easily? Why wasn’t the grid built stronger, and why wasn’t vegetation cut away? These are CenterPoint’s primary responsibilities for which they receive a guaranteed profit from customer bills, and they didn’t fulfill them.

CenterPoint officials have stammered their responses.

“What we've seen now is more impact than what we originally thought that we were going to see,” Alyssia Oshodi, CenterPoint Director of Communications, told KHOU television.

CenterPoint had plenty of warnings. So is the problem shoddy maintenance work by CenterPoint subcontractors after the company trimmed 700 employees since 2020 to boost profits? Did the company cheap out on materials and engineering standards? Does the company believe blacking out 85% of its customers in a category 1 hurricane is acceptable?

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

Betcha they wish they had back all those coal and lignite plants they shut down in the Obama years, and the people back to work the power lines.

[who knows what evil?]

DEI and chix in the mix.

[texanyankee]

I’m sure there’s a ton of opposition groups who raise cane whenever a tree is threatened with removal.

[Rockingham]

In Texas as elsewhere, electric utilities are highly regulated entities, accountable to a public commission for their rates, service quality, and infrastructure. Strong, storm resistant utility lines are expensive though. When Texans want to harden their utility lines against storms, they can do like Florida and require it.

[TStro]

My son in League City is still out of power
My wife went to see the grandkids Friday morning and broke her arm Friday night and couldn’t drive home
Because of the power outage I couldn`t fly to drive her back until Tuesday.
There wasn’t that much damage anywhere. Just tree damage
Obviously maintenance of the shrubbery around the lines was the big factor
Because of this she won’t be able to have surgery until Tuesday, a week and a half after the accident

[power2]

I agree with your point about the Feds trying to get the Texas grid under thei jurisdiction, and that it’s not good, but honestly the Texas regulators and utilities have done a horrible job. With the big push for renewables, Texas seems to have blackouts during every heat wave and cold snap due shortage of generation capacity. Shame on the State of Texas for allowing these morons to create one of the worst electrical systems in th country (note that the grid is not the problem….its the generation mix and rules).

[ConservativeMind]

Well, this was a real Houston hurricane:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_Hurricane_Harvey_in_Texas

[butlerweave]

monopoly = bad idea

[Ex-Con777]

> Did they lose the capacity to produce or did winds take down their transmission lines? <

Lines are down everywhere. Transformers are blown. One nearby neighborhood reported 11 out of 19 transformers were out. The fix is to start at the trunk and move out to the branches. Though it is a simple process, it is also a time consuming process.

There are 12,000 crews working the problem. We got power back, but just a few streets over in our very large subdivision they are still dark. It will take time. Just because a tree took out a power line in your neighborhood, fixing that line may not restore power. There could be numerous other breaks upstream of that.

Houston was #2 in population growth in 2023. New construction is still ongoing everywhere you look. At the end of Beryl nearly all of the 2.5 million customers were without power. Three days later it’s down to 870,000 customers affected.

Houston is a sprawling city. The saying used to be “Houston is an hour away from Houston”. Now it’s an hour and a half away.

EC

[dfwgator]

The only difference between Houston and DFW, is DFW is divided between Dallas and Fort Worth. Whereas it’s just all Houston.

[IYAS9YAS]

Lines are down everywhere. Transformers are blown. One nearby neighborhood reported 11 out of 19 transformers were out. The fix is to start at the trunk and move out to the branches. Though it is a simple process, it is also a time consuming process.

That's what I figured. Not a lack of production, but storm damage. We had a lightning strike take out a transformer near us earlier this month. People were bitching up a storm for a three-hour outage.

We do have it pretty good here in that regard, but I am definitely wanting to ensure we have at least refrigerators and heat when needed. AC is a pain to live without in the summer, but it's doable. Freezing in the winter is double-plus ungood.

[Fai Mao]

You cannot really bury high tension in a swamp and Houston is built on a swamp.

Center point deserves some blame but the local government deserves more.

[Fai Mao]

You cannot really bury high tension in a swamp and Houston is built on a swamp.

Center point deserves some blame but the local government deserves more.

[pierrem15]

I believe the only way to solve this would be to spend a kabillion dollars and bury all the cables.

You mean like just about every city in Europe.

I recall the power going out only a handful of times as a kid in the 60s and 70s. Now it's a regular occurrence. We used to be a real country. Now we're becoming a Third World s---hole because that enriches the business and political elites.

[Ex-Con777]

Thank God our house has a gas stove, gas water heat, and a gas furnace. A portable generator easily handled the load for everything buy AC.

Others with all electric houses had to leave to survive.

I met a dude exiting Dominos Pizza yesterday with an armful of large pizzas. He said he was tired of eating grilled steak and chicken and needed a fix of “dirty food”. It did bring a chuckle.

EC

[ShadowAce]

Hurricanes with any amount of wind force are going to snap power poles. It can't be avoided.

HOWEVER--Centerpoint seems to avoid trimming back trees and maintaining lines so that when things like Beryl do happen, it requires MUCH more work to get things back to "normal."

So yeah--I blame Centerpoint.

[subterfuge]

Why should the power company maintain the grid infrastructure when the feds (taxpayers) will pay for the rebuild? That’s the way the world works now.

[who knows what evil?]

No doubt.

[Zhang Fei]

[You are suggesting private individuals should be trimming around power lines? Is that done anywhere in the country?]

---

I’m thinking licensed tree trimmers for work around power lines. If home owners want to take their chances, that’s up to them. That’s a private sector solution that puts its finger on the nub of the problem, and gets the people who own problematic trees to monitor and fix the problem.

[Political Junkie Too]

I'm hearing that a billboard took out the power lines to my area. Also, I'm at the end of the grid from the substation that services my area. I suspect I will be one of the last homes to get power restored.

Fortunately, I have a standby generator that's been running continuously since Monday.

-PJ