‘We’re doing everything we can’: CenterPoint Energy VP questioned by Houston City Council on power restoration efforts

HOUSTON – With growing frustrations with CenterPoint Energy over its Hurricane Beryl restoration efforts, it should come as no surprise that there has been just as much scrutiny from Houston lawmakers.

At the City Council meeting Wednesday morning, Brad Tutunjian, vice president of regulatory affairs for CenterPoint Energy, sought to bring transparency to the growing tensions as more than 1 million customers remain without power.

MORE: When will power be restored in your area? CenterPoint Energy’s restoration map aims to provide a clearer outlook

Shortly before noon, he admitted that 560,000 customers in the city of Houston were without power; the rest of those without power are outside the city limits. Still, with unclear answers and growing frustrations over when the lights would be turned back on and why some areas were restored and others were not, Tutunjian was certainly in the hot seat.

After Beryl ripped through the Houston area, CenterPoint announced it would mobilize about 12,000 workers from outside Texas to help with restoration efforts. This comes after more than 2 million customers lost power, but officials have set a goal of restoring 1 million customers by the end of the day Wednesday.

However, Tutunjian told the city council they were still surprised by the extent of the damage caused by Beryl.

“We were fully prepared,” he said. “We mobilized what we thought was a significant number of resources. Storms are unpredictable and you don’t know how much damage will be done. Typically, we wait out the storm, assess the damage and bring in crews.”

SEE ALSO: ‘Go figure’: Houston residents use Whataburger app to track power outages as CenterPoint is down

Tutunjian added that crews didn’t officially begin deploying to begin repairs until after the storm passed through the area, around 3 p.m. Monday.

“Preparedness is in our response, and unfortunately when a hurricane damages our facilities, the extent of the damage is unfortunate,” Tutunjian said.

As of Tuesday night, CenterPoint confirmed it had restored power to a third of its customers without power. Earlier in the day, we asked CenterPoint officials, “What about the remaining million?” KPRC 2 has not been provided with a specific timeline.

To ease tensions and the growing number of customers wondering when their lights will be back on, CenterPoint Energy has launched an online restoration map. The interactive map, which is admittedly not mobile friendly, was meant to replace the discontinued “active outage” map, which still faces scrutiny from viewers who email KPRC 2 calling it inaccurate and misleading because some areas they live in are marked as “live” and the opposite is true.

According to Michelle Hundley of CenterPoint Media Relations, this could be due to a “nested outage.” She told KPRC 2 digital producer Holly Galvan in May: “This happens when, even after the primary problem is fixed, smaller issues are still causing outages in specific areas. These secondary issues could be from unseen damage or overloaded systems,” Hundley explained. “Another reason could be that customers on the same street may be on different electrical circuits.”

REQUEST 2: Why did my neighbors get their power turned back on, but not me?

A burned-out transformer could also play a role, which KPRC 2 Investigates senior producer Jason Nguyen examined in this report.

To which Tutunjian responded: “We’re not going to focus on transformers until we get the circuits installed.”

Part of that, Tutunjian said, was to make the system more resilient. Last April, Tutunjian said CenterPoint developed a robust plan and filed it with the state to outline what they wanted to do differently, something called a “resiliency brief.”

“The world is different,” he said. “Storms are more frequent and more violent. Our paradigm has to change.”

These plans, however, make no sense to customers, who are increasingly impatient, especially after the intense Texas heat.

“We’re doing everything we can,” Tutunjian said. “We’re in every neighborhood. We don’t segregate neighborhoods.”

KPRC 2 is investigating Mario Diaz and we’ll have more on this in a full live report at 4:30 p.m.