Posted on 07/12/2024 5:27:17 AM PDT by 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?
(Excerpt) Read more at houstonchronicle.com ...
The article is pure unadulterated bull shit
I’ve been through several, several hurricanes. I’m surprised when I don’t lose power. I’ve lost power for almost 3 weeks. It never even occurred to me to blame the power company. I believe the only way to solve this would be to spend a kabillion dollars and bury all the cables.
And even then, the grid would fail due to submerged transformers.
I read you, and I don’t see such storms in the NW. Our big issue looming is blackouts due to government policies here, and I’m trying to figure out how best to mitigate that problem before the likelihood of such blackouts increases 1-300%.
“Houston paper criticizes pols, regulators and company executives for putting the biggest city in the southwest through a multi-day blackout after a mild hurricane.”
Agree, and I’m not even sure it was a hurricane in Houston as it landed 50 miles south. I think the reasons people didn’t prepare was that it was earlier forecast much further south, near the Mexico border, it was a holiday weekend, and it wasn’t even a hurricane until just before it landed (it was a big hurricane a week earlier, but then weakened to a tropical storm).
But, overall, if this is how Houston holds up in a Cat 1 hurricane, one could only imagine what a REAL hurricane will do.
The one good thing is that at least the low-hanging fruit (meaning the weak trees and poles) were taken down and not much other damage, so a repeat of this hurricane, this year, should be a lot less damage...but they do need to get to work on the grid, because next time it may not be a Cat 1.
#1 reason people are leaving, cannot afford a generator to insure they have Reliable Electricity.
#2 reason people are leaving, cannot get a generator quick enough to insure they have Electricity.
2k lost power in my town (around 20%) in Indiana and winds were just 45 mph. They had went down the old tracks near my house on Monday cutting back trees or it might have been worse.
Why is that? I admit that I have no love lost or even left for center point energy, formerly Houston Larceny and Power. In times past I thought they did a pretty lousy job of their responsibilities. Very happy to not need them any longer. My local coop does a much better job with what center point would consider a skeleton crew.
The article presumes the company can prevent hurricane damage. The writer committed journo malpractice
The biggest problem that I see is because these failures give additional talking points to the left. There is a renewed effort by the left to absorb the Texas grid into the national grid thereby making Texas power subservient to the whims of FedGov. The commies in WDC would love nothing more than to be able to control our electricity at such a macro level. Imagine the Feds being able to shut down the power to all or some Red states just before an election.
Nice power grid youse got there ... be a shame if it stayed off for a few months because youse voted the wrong way.
Beryl barely reached category 1 status as a hurricane and it didn’t even make a direct hit on Houston.
I haven’t seen such a clusterf###k like this.
Everyone could see it days in advance.
The problem being is this has nothing to do with the power grid but you can bet that’s how it will be spun.
[Beryl barely reached category 1 status as a hurricane and it didn’t even make a direct hit on Houston.
I haven’t seen such a clusterf###k like this.
Everyone could see it days in advance.]
Maintenance isn’t glamorous. Nobody credits a politician for 100% up time. And the consequences of shoddy maintenance may appear years after he’s out of office. Whereas the cost of upping the utility’s game will appear on every power bill today, something the columnist falls to mention.
Add in the fact that Houston & the suburbs are full of trees & clearing the growth along the power line right of ways is way down on the list of ‘to do’ items.
[Add in the fact that Houston & the suburbs are full of trees & clearing the growth along the power line right of ways is way down on the list of ‘to do’ items.]
Yah, I was in Houston during Alicia. Anyone who does not expect power poles to go down during even a mild hurricane has no bloody idea what they are talking about. Yah can’t bury the lines when the water table is <12 feet below the surface. Yah can’t stabilize thousands of power poles in gumbo soil.
The geography is hostile. Grow up and live with it.
You are suggesting private individuals should be trimming around power lines? Is that done anywhere in the country?
Yes and the Houston Chronical is full of it
Did they lose the capacity to produce or did winds take down their transmission lines? If the latter, they’re not to blame. If the former, then, possibly. Depending on the reason they lost capacity.
It’s more the responsibility of the power companies. Sure, the city or county can pass some type of code enforcement to encourage the power companies to clean up the right of ways.
From the power line to the home or business is strictly on the private individual to maintain.
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