1 million customers expected to have power restored by end of day Wednesday

HOUSTON – CenterPoint Energy estimates it can restore power to 1 million customers affected by Hurricane Beryl by the end of the day Wednesday.

The company’s communications director, Alyssia Oshodi, spoke with KPRC 2 Monday night to provide more information on the situation the company is facing in terms of power restoration and the current status of the process.

“I think the impact of the storm was much greater than we initially thought,” Oshodi said. “I mean, up until a few days ago, we didn’t even think it would have this much of an impact on the Houston area. So we did a lot of preparation before the storm hit in the days leading up to it, but again, the damage was much greater than we thought it would be.”

Oshodi said about 12,000 workers, especially line workers and vegetation management professionals, have been mobilized to help restore power to the affected areas. She added that these workers are expected to start arriving in the area tonight and more will arrive on Tuesday and Wednesday.

“We’re going to spend the next few days visually assessing the damage to our system so we can develop an appropriate restoration plan. While those efforts are underway, we’re also actively restoring. We’re just under 2 million customers down. So we’ve restored service to about 285,000 customers since the storm hit,” she said.

Asked how Beryl compared to the derecho event that occurred in May in terms of damage to infrastructure, Oshodi said they should be able to give a better answer on Tuesday as teams continue to inspect the damage.

“Just those numbers indicate that we probably have more damage to the system, where we have, you know, over 2 million customers out of service versus about 900,000 in the May event,” she said.

KPRC 2 asked Oshodi if the company was concerned that restoring power to some areas could take longer than others. She said that while she is still assessing the damage and gathering information to answer that question specifically, she believes she can restore power to 1 million affected customers by the end of the day Wednesday.

“Based on our efforts and how we anticipate those efforts will progress, we believe we will be able to restore service to a million customers by Wednesday,” she said. “When we talk about the hardest hit areas, we expect those customers and those areas to have extended outages. So we want people to plan accordingly. We know this is a very difficult time to be without power. And especially given the heat that we’re experiencing in our area. So we’re doing everything we can to work as quickly as possible to restore service to our customers.”

Oshodi said the company would provide multiple updates every day on its progress in restoring power.

““We just want to continue to let you know that we know we have a lot of work to do and we need to work hard to restore our services to our customers as quickly and safely as possible, and we appreciate your patience. We know this is not an ideal situation, but we are confident that we are doing everything we can to resolve these issues and damages as quickly as possible and restore our services to our customers,” Oshodi said.