CenterPoint Houston Power Outage Map Still Unavailable as Beryl Looms

As Tropical Storm Beryl bears down on Houston, a key local resource on power outages and restoration times remains unavailable: the Outage Tracker operated by CenterPoint Energy, the city’s primary electricity provider.

CenterPoint’s Outage Tracker, a map of the Houston metro area that highlights areas affected by power outages, has been offline since May due to “technical difficulties” caused by the derecho that swept through Harris County that month, CenterPoint officials said.

In a press release issued Saturday, CenterPoint said it plans to replace Outage Tracker with a “reimagined cloud platform” by the end of July.

The lack of neighborhood-level data has frustrated some CenterPoint customers, who wanted more clarity on the extent of power outages and how quickly power will be restored. The company maintains the systems that provide electricity to nearly all residents in Harris and Fort Bend counties, as well as several other areas of Greater Houston. About 2.8 million customers in the Houston area rely on CenterPoint, according to the company.

CenterPoint released an interactive map detailing power restoration estimates after the derecho, but it came four days after the storm hit.

In the meantime, here’s how Greater Houston residents can access information about power outages and restorations during this week’s severe weather.

CenterPoint Clients

As CenterPoint works to restore its outage tracking devices, the company’s Power Alert service provides community-specific outage information, including estimated restoration times, via phone call, text message or email. Customers can sign up for alerts through their CenterPoint online account.

CenterPoint also provides general information about power outages through its Storm Center, which is updated every 15 minutes. The center shows the number of customers affected by power outages and customers whose power was restored in the previous 24 hours, among other totals.

Entergy Customers

Entergy, which supplies electricity to much of Montgomery, Chambers and Liberty counties, operates its own outage tracker with a map.

Like CenterPoint, it provides an outage alert service that notifies customers of outages and restoration times via SMS.

Texas-New Mexico Power Customers

Texas-New Mexico Power, which covers parts of Galveston and Brazoria counties, also offers an outage tracking map, which works.

Like CenterPoint and Energy, it offers an SMS outage alert service with information about outages, restoration updates and severe weather alerts.

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