With hurricane season well underway, and threatening weather out over the ocean, electric utility Centerpoint is under fire again over whether it will be ready to keep our lights on after the next storm.
“There are a lot of weak links across the management of the Texas grid,” warned University of Houston energy expert Ed Hirs.
After the derecho and Hurricane Beryl hit Houston in 2024, critics accuse Centerpoint of still being unprepared, and of failing to reimburse ratepayers for almost a billion dollars the utility invested in new generators which will be of little use for most of the state.
“CenterPoint is trying to play catch-up,” Hirs said. "You can’t just ignore an infrastructure for 20 years and then say you’re going to fix it and fix it overnight. This takes time, money, and labor.”
Ironically, Hirs suggests that last year’s damage from Beryl and the derecho has removed some risks for this hurricane season, including vegetation that CenterPoint has fallen behind in removing from hear power lines. He says state leaders should keep holding CenterPoint accountable for any unpreparedness, although he acknowledges the only elected leader overseeing the utility is Governor Greg Abbot, who appoints the members of the state’s Public Utility Commission.
He also says voters and utility customers should be mindful of the need for reliable utility service in times of crisis, even if that ultimately does mean higher bills.
“We can’t just fix this with backup generators at home,” he explained. “The challenge we’ve got is, if the infrastructure goes down, we lose our traffic lights. We lose electric for grocery stores, for health care, for gasoline stations and, as we noticed during Hurricane Beryl, crime tripled.”