These Houston Neighborhoods Are Experiencing CenterPoint Power Outages Worse Than Most

In a filing with the Texas Public Utilities Commission in April 2024, CenterPoint listed its 50 worst-performing circuits in each of the six years between 2018 and 2023. The Chronicle used geographic data from CenterPoint’s new restoration tracking system to map those circuits.

Two circuits listed in the PUC folder could not be mapped because they did not appear in the CenterPoint restore trace.

Major storm events

The power outage estimates in this article do not include outage minutes related to major storms that cause sustained power loss to 10% or more of local customers over a 24-hour period, such as Hurricane Beryl in July.

System Average Interruption Duration Index (SAIDI)

A common metric used by the U.S. Energy Information Administration to assess the reliability of power across the country, SAIDI represents the total number of outage minutes experienced by the average customer over the course of a year. Circuits with higher SAIDI values ​​have longer outages and are therefore considered lower quality circuits.

The maximum disturbance length values ​​detailed in the maps above represent the highest SAIDI value for each circuit over all years of available data.

Affected customers

The number of customers consuming electricity from each circuit fluctuates each year. The values ​​shown in the maps above reflect the most recent total number of customers available in the data.

Map simplifications

Circuit layouts have been simplified for faster loading times. The general shapes of the circuits have been preserved during the simplification process.