CenterPoint Energy estimates that hundreds of thousands of customers will remain without power into next week — but it hasn’t said yet which specific areas should prepare for persistent outages. As of Thursday morning, 1.1 million households and businesses it serves lacked electricity.
The longer-lasting outages were likely to be in the hard-hit areas of Matagorda County, Brazoria County and parts of Galveston County, along with some pockets elsewhere, said Jason Ryan, executive vice president of regulatory services and government affairs for CenterPoint, at a Public Utility Commission of Texas meeting on Thursday.
The slower work will involve rebuilding large spans of infrastructure, Ryan told the commissioners, such as poles broken and toppled onto the ground.
“We know that we still have a lot of work to do and we will not stop the work until it is done,” Ryan said.
The Houston-area utility says it will have power back on for an additional 400,000 households and businesses by the end of the day Friday. It plans to restore electricity for another 350,000 customers by the end of the day Sunday. The company said it would release more specific estimates today.
Nearly 3 million electric- ity customers lost power in Texas after Hurricane Beryl swept across the southeastern portion of the state Monday. As of Thursday morning, 1.3 million businesses and households across several counties still lacked electricity. The vast majority of those are CenterPoint customers.
Pressure is mounting on CenterPoint, the Houston- area electric utility, after it bungled its communications to the public amid yet another massive Texas power outage. The company appeared in chaos as it worked to turn on power for angry people who faced days in dangerous heat without air conditioning, including stressed customers struggling to manage health issues without electricity. More than 48 hours after the storm left the region, the company still had no clear timeline for when people could expect their electricity to be restored.
Yet even as elected officials piled onto everyday Texans’ scathing criticisms of how long the outages are lasting, CenterPoint appears to be restoring power to people faster than it has after recent storms.
“We have never restored more than a million customers a little over two days after a hurricane before and you can only do that with significant readiness,” Ryan said at the PUC meeting Thursday.
President and CEO of Entergy Texas Eliecer 'Eli' Viamontes said the utility, which serves areas around College Station and Beaumont, still had 105,000 customers without power.Vice President of Regulatory Affairs for Texas-New Mexico Power Stacy Whitehurst said the utility, which serves some areas south of Houston and around Brazoria on the Gulf Coast, said 30,000 customers still lacked power.And AEP Texas Vice President of Regulatory and Finance Chad Burnett said the utility, which stretches from Brownsville to Bay City, still had over 2,000 customers without power. Utility representatives made the case to state regulators on Thursday that they were prepared for the storm. PUC Chairman Thomas Gleeson told Ryan that the utility needed to get out in the community to listen to feedback when the repairs were done.
“The public expects more communication, more frequent communication, different modes of communication,” Gleeson said. “And so I think it’s definitely incumbent on all of us to look at the way we communicate going forward.”
