AUSTIN, Texas — Most of Houston's power outages following Hurricane Beryl ought to be resolved inside the following two days, town's major power company said Monday, while Texas Gov. Greg Abbott threatened to punish CenterPoint Energy even after the lights are restored.
The Texas Public Utility Commission, the state's regulator, announced Monday that it had launched an investigation into CenterPoint's storm preparations and response requested by Abbott, as a whole lot of hundreds of residents were without power for greater than every week after the storm. The governor gave the utility until the tip of July to submit plans to secure power for the rest of the possibly lively hurricane season and to trim trees and vegetation that threaten power lines.
But some energy experts doubt that Abbott and Texas regulators, whose leaders are appointed by the governor, have done enough up to now to crack down on utilities or make transmission lines within the nation's largest energy-producing state more resilient.
“With its repeated power outages, CenterPoint is showing us that they simply do not seem capable of doing their job,” Abbott said in Houston on Monday.
Spokespeople for CenterPoint, which defended its response and the speed of fixing the outages, didn’t immediately reply to an email searching for comment Monday.
Per week after Beryl made landfall as a Category 1 hurricane—toppling power lines, uprooting trees and sending branches crashing onto power lines—the storm's damage and prolonged outages are once more testing the resilience of Texas's power grid.
In 2021, a winter storm plunged the state right into a deep freeze that knocked out power to hundreds of thousands of residents and brought Texas's electrical grid to the brink of complete collapse. After the deadly blackout, Abbott and state lawmakers vowed changes that will higher ensure Texans aren't left at midnight during dangerous cold and warmth.
Unlike that crisis, which was brought on by an absence of power generation, Beryl caused strong winds that downed power lines and knocked out power to about 2.7 million homes and businesses. Most of that was concentrated within the greater Houston area, where CenterPoint reported Monday that power had been restored to greater than 2 million customers. Still, greater than 200,000 people remained without electricity.
Residents in Houston and the encompassing area suffered from heat and humidity, stood in long lines for gasoline, food and water, and ran to community centers to search out air con. Hospitals saw a rise within the variety of patients with heat-related illnesses and carbon monoxide poisoning brought on by improper use of home generators.
“This is not a failure of the entire system,” Abbott said. “This is an indictment of a company that has failed to do its job.”
At a special Houston City Council meeting on Monday, resident Alin Boswell said he had been without power for eight days and had not seen anyone from CenterPoint in his neighborhood until morning. He said town and company must have known the potential for damage after storms left greater than 1,000,000 people without power in May.
“All of you and CenterPoint had a preview of this debacle in May,” Boswell told council members.
Ed Hirs, an energy expert on the University of Houston, said the failures transcend CenterPoint. He said regulators are unwilling to make sure power lines are sturdier and trees are adequately trimmed.
Hirs said Abbott and other executives who’re focusing exclusively on the utility after Beryl are searching for a scapegoat.
“Of course, none of them have a mirror nearby,” he said. “It's not exclusively CenterPoint. The regulatory contract has completely broken down.”
CenterPoint has at the very least 10 years of vegetation management reports on file with Texas regulators. In April, the corporate filed a 900-page report detailing long-term plans and spending that will be needed to make its power grid more resilient, from tree trimming to resilience against storms and floods to cybersecurity attacks.
In a report filed May 1, CenterPoint said it spent nearly $35 million on tree removal and trimming in 2023. The company said it will focus its efforts on greater than 3,500 miles (5,630 kilometers) of its estimated 29,000 miles (46,670 kilometers) of overhead power lines this 12 months.
Vegetation control stays a key consider avoiding one other blackout throughout the next storm, said Michael Webber, a mechanical engineering professor on the University of Texas who makes a speciality of clean energy technology. But it's just one in every of many problems that power firms are consistently facing.
Policymakers need to revamp Texas' energy grid to adapt to climate change, Webber said.
“We designed our system for past weather,” he said.
In a message to CenterPoint customers Sunday evening, CEO Jason Wells wrote that the corporate had made “remarkable” progress.
“The rapid pace of recovery is a testament to our preparation and the investments we have made in the system,” Wells wrote.
Lathan, who reported from Austin, Texas, is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on issues that aren't as continuously covered.
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