The majority of Houston’s power outages following Hurricane Beryl should be resolved within the next two days, according to the city’s main utility company, CenterPoint Energy. However, Texas Governor Greg Abbott has threatened to penalize the company even after power is restored.
The Texas Public Utility Commission, at Abbott’s request, announced on Monday that it had launched an investigation into CenterPoint’s storm preparation and response. This comes as hundreds of thousands of residents endured over a week without power in the aftermath of the storm. The governor has given the utility until the end of July to submit plans to safeguard the power supply for the remainder of the potentially active hurricane season, including measures for tree and vegetation management around power lines.
Some energy experts are skeptical about whether Abbott and Texas regulators, who are appointed by the governor, have been stringent enough in their oversight of utilities or in enhancing the resilience of transmission lines in the country’s largest energy-producing state.
“CenterPoint’s repeated failure to provide power shows that they seem to be incapable of doing their job,” Abbott said Monday in Houston.
CenterPoint has defended its response and the speed of its power restoration efforts, but representatives did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Monday.
A week after Hurricane Beryl, which made landfall as a Category 1 storm, knocked down power lines and caused widespread tree damage, the resilience of Texas’ power grid is once again under scrutiny. In 2021, a severe winter storm caused a catastrophic power failure, leaving millions of Texans without electricity and nearly collapsing the state’s power grid. Following that crisis, Abbott and state lawmakers promised reforms to prevent similar occurrences in extreme weather conditions.
Unlike the 2021 winter storm, which was caused by power generation failures, Beryl’s high winds caused physical damage by downing power lines and cutting power to approximately 2.7 million homes and businesses, predominantly in the Houston area. By Monday, CenterPoint had restored power to more than 2 million customers, but over 200,000 were still without electricity.
Residents in the Houston area have struggled in the heat and humidity, standing in long lines for essential supplies and seeking relief in community centers. Hospitals have reported increased cases of heat-related illnesses and carbon monoxide poisoning due to improper generator use.
“This isn’t a failure of the entire system,” Abbott stated. “This is an indictment of one company that’s failed to do its job.”
During a special Houston City Council meeting on Monday, resident Alin Boswell expressed frustration, having gone eight days without power and seeing no CenterPoint personnel in his neighborhood until that morning. He criticized both the city and the utility for not being better prepared, noting that storms in May had already exposed vulnerabilities by knocking out power to over a million people.
Ed Hirs, an energy fellow at the University of Houston, believes the issues extend beyond CenterPoint, citing regulators’ reluctance to enforce resilience measures for transmission lines and tree trimming.
Hirs accused Abbott and other leaders of using CenterPoint as a scapegoat, stating, “Not one of them has a mirror around. It’s not CenterPoint exclusively. The regulatory compact has totally broken down.”
CenterPoint maintains at least ten years of vegetation management reports with Texas regulators and recently filed a comprehensive report on long-term plans and expenses for making its power system more resilient. This includes tree trimming, storm and flood preparedness, and cybersecurity measures. In 2023 alone, the company spent nearly $35 million on vegetation management and plans to target more than 3,500 miles of its estimated 29,000 miles of overhead power lines in 2024.
Vegetation management remains a critical issue for preventing future power outages, according to Michael Webber, a University of Texas mechanical engineering professor specializing in clean energy technology. However, he emphasized that Texas’ energy grid needs broader reforms to adapt to changing climate conditions.
“We’ve designed our system for weather of the past,” Webber said.
CenterPoint has defended its storm preparation efforts and reported bringing in about 12,000 additional workers from outside Houston. The company stated that prepositioning those workers within the storm’s predicted impact area would have been unsafe.
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In a message to CenterPoint customers on Sunday night, CEO Jason Wells praised the progress made in restoring power, calling it “remarkable” and a testament to the company’s preparation and investments in the system.
