CenterPoint Energy continues to closely monitor weather forecasts and prepare for potential storm impacts from the Gulf of Mexico tropical system Invest 91L.
According to the National Weather Service, the system has a 90% chance of tropical development, with increasing likelihood of a tropical storm or hurricane. CenterPoint’s ongoing planning includes preparing staging sites, crews and equipment, communicating safety actions to customers, and continuing to secure additional frontline resources from mutual assistance companies, the utility said.
CenterPoint said it has secured approximately 700 additional vegetation management personnel to help with pre-storm work and has identified more than 5,000 additional frontline workers if needed for response
“While our weather experts work to determine the path, intensity and timing of the tropical activity, we remain vigilant and are fully focused on executing on our storm preparation plan,” said Darin Carroll, Senior Vice President, Electric Business. “We are in the process of mobilizing all of our available resources and mutual assistance resources from other utility companies so we will be prepared to safely and quickly restore power to our customers should this tropical system impact our area.”
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CenterPoint has been in hot waters since its response to prolonged power outages caused by Hurricane Beryl in July.
Hurricane Beryl’s toll on CenterPoint’s power grid in Houston forced utility crews to mitigate 35,000 downed trees, which faced “already poor soil conditions” before the story, CenterPoint said. Two of CenterPoint’s most publicized shortcomings during the Hurricane Beryl response involved the response times of internal and mutual assistance utility crews and poor customer communication, including the unavailability of its customer outage map.
Executives had previously told local leaders they were “fully prepared” for Hurricane Beryl by pre-positioning crews, quickly standing up temporary response staging sites, and dispatching crews as soon as the storm had passed.
High demand for CenterPoint’s customer outage tracker during Hurricane Beryl caused the system to crash, executives said, leading some residents to rely on a regional fast food app for updates. CenterPoint said it has migrated to a new, cloud-based outage tracker designed to accommodate higher user traffic and will hire a new senior leader to lead the utility’s customer communication strategy. By Aug. 9, all call center agents are being re-trained. The center’s call capacity will be increased by 165% for storm events.
In a recent letter to lawmakers, CenterPoint proposed a roughly $5 billion investment toward grid resiliency in the Houston area. This includes removing vegetation around power lines, along with system hardening, advanced automation, predictive modeling, and further actions to improve preparedness and communication ahead of winter and the 2025 hurricane season.
