Environment
BY MELISSA ENAJE
Hurricane Beryl’s impact left around half a million CenterPoint customers without power for at least five days after the hurricane landed on July 8. Eight Harris County fatalities were attributed to heat exposure due to power outages, according to July 24 data from the Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences. From July until December, investigations and formal hearings are ongoing into CenterPoint Energy and other Greater Houston-area utility providers’ emergency response and preparedness efforts for the storm. Meanwhile, a new 13-member Texas Senate Special Committee was formed July 17 and tasked with studying power companies’ hurricane and storm preparedness. The committee first met July 29, asking why more than 2 million Houston-area residents lost power and why it took weeks to restore it. The hearing was held as Texas policymakers continued investigations into how various utility companies performed not only in the wake of Beryl, but also the derecho wind storm that hit Houston in May, knocking out power for nearly 1 million CenterPoint customers. While appearing in front of Texas public utility commissioners on July 25, CenterPoint Energy executives laid out a three-phase resiliency plan with details and deadlines as early as Aug. 1. CenterPoint’s plan focuses on three priorities: • Customer communications • Resiliency investments • Strengthened partnerships CenterPoint releases resiliency plan after Beryl
The action taken
In what may be the first staff action related to Beryl, Lynnae Wilson, CenterPoint’s senior vice president of electric business, is no longer with the company as of July 29, according to an email from CenterPoint media officials. In a July 28 publicly advertised letter, CenterPoint CEO Jason Wells apologized for falling short of customer expectations during times of emergency. Wells also outlined immediate actions to improve not only future response and restoration efforts, but
also customer and public-facing communications. CenterPoint Energy’s resiliency plan includes prioritizing power restoration and temporary generator deployment for critical facilities. The top five general priority levels for mobile generator deployment include: • Hospitals • Emergency services & Houston airports • Cooling centers • Senior/assisted living facilities • Small emergency rooms
CenterPoint Energy's 3-phase timeline to implement resiliency improvements*
Completed
Phase 1
Phase 2
Phase 3
Immediately
By Aug. 15
By Dec. 31
Prioritize restoration and temporary generation deployment for critical facilities, including critical care facilities, water utilities
Harden nearly 350 distribution line miles to the latest extreme wind standard; CenterPoint is replacing wooden towers with steel and concrete towers
Complete all aerial imagery and visual inspections on all overhead distribution circuits affected by Beryl to identify equipment or vegeta- tion-related issues that could impact future outages Informed by the Texas governor’s office, CenterPoint will execute identified repairs based on risk Increase call center capacity by 165% for storm events with a standard average answer speed of 5 minutes or less
Launch initial public communi- cations earlier in the storm cycle
Hire two new senior leaders: one for emergency preparedness and response and one for communications
By Aug. 1
By Aug. 31
By June 1, 2025
Launch a new cloud-based
Leverage AI and implement changes to accelerate dispatch of vegetation crews to immediately ad- dress higher-risk vegetation issues through Dec. 31 Remove 100% of vegetation from the 2,000 incremental distribution lines considered to be at a higher-risk due to vegetation Deploy 300 automated devices to reduce sustained interruptions and reduce restoration time By Sept. 30 Select sites for up to 10 donated backup generator facilities
Install donated backup generator facilities
storm outage tracker
Increase mobile generators
from four to 13 units
Adopt a daily press briefing policy before and during a named storm and daily restoration updates during the press briefing
By Aug. 9
Coordinate more closely with local, county and state officials as well as emergency management personnel to align response efforts
*LIST IS NOT COMPREHENSIVE SOURCES: CENTERPOINT ENERGY, TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY SMART GRID CENTER/ COMMUNITY IMPACT
Number of customers without power 2.5M CenterPoint Energy Hurricane Beryl outages
What to expect
Impact , CenterPoint did not provide information on how much the new plan will cost the company and its customers. The state could take action on energy legislation next legislative session as Senate committee members on July 29 looked into what new regulations or legislation they can enact to keep similar circumstances from happening again. While no further Senate committee meetings on hurricane preparedness are scheduled for this year, the PUC’s final investigation report will be delivered to the governor and Legislature for review by Dec. 1.
CenterPoint originally filed a $2.2 billion-$2.7 billion resiliency plan with the PUC for its long- term sustainability efforts on April 29, prior to the derecho and Beryl outages. Internal July 24 communication between Wells and Gov. Greg Abbott indicated Wells enacted stricter deadlines to CenterPoint’s original resiliency plan, which required refiling with the PUC in order to meet the new strategies, Wells said. By Aug. 1, the company withdrew its PUC filing and announced it needs to complete a broader assessment of additional resiliency opportunities. In an email with Community
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Hurricane Beryl lands
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HEIGHTS - RIVER OAKS - MONTROSE EDITION
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