Texas governor criticizes Houston Energy as utility says power will be restored by Wednesday

AUSTIN, Texas — Most of Houston’s power outages following Hurricane Beryl are expected to be repaired within the next two days, the city’s main electric company said Monday, as Texas Gov. Greg Abbott threatened to punish CenterPoint Energy even after the lights come back on.

The Texas Public Utility Commission, the state’s regulatory agency, announced Monday that it had launched an investigation requested by Abbott into CenterPoint’s preparedness and response to the storm, as hundreds of thousands of residents suffered in the heat without power for more than a week after the storm. The governor gave the company until the end of July to submit plans to protect power during the remainder of what could be an active hurricane season, as well as to trim trees and vegetation that threaten power lines.

But some energy experts question whether Abbott and Texas regulators, whose leaders are appointed by the governor, have done enough so far to get tough on utilities or make transmission lines more resilient in the nation’s largest energy-producing state.

“What CenterPoint is showing us by their repeated failure to deliver power is that they simply cannot seem to do their job,” Abbott said Monday in Houston.

Spokespeople for CenterPoint, which has defended its response and pace of restoring the outages, did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment Monday.

A week after Beryl made landfall as a Category 1 hurricane — knocking down power lines, uprooting trees and causing branches to crash into power lines — the storm’s damage and prolonged outages have once again put the resilience of Texas’ power grid under scrutiny.

In 2021, a winter storm plunged the state into freezing cold, knocking out power to millions and pushing Texas’s electrical grid to the brink of total collapse. In the wake of the deadly blackout, Abbott and state lawmakers promised changes that would better ensure Texans weren’t left in the dark by dangerous cold and heat.

Unlike that crisis, which was triggered by a power outage, Beryl brought high winds that knocked down power lines and knocked out electricity to about 2.7 million homes and businesses. Most of that was concentrated in the Houston area, where CenterPoint said Monday it had restored power to more than 2 million customers. Still, more than 200,000 people remained without power.

Residents in the Houston area sweltered in heat and humidity, waited in long lines for gas, food and water, and had to go to community centers to find air conditioning. Hospitals saw an increase in patients suffering from heat-related illnesses and carbon monoxide poisoning caused by improper use of home generators.

“This is not a failure of the entire system,” Abbott said. “This is an indictment of a company that didn’t do its job.”

At a special Houston City Council meeting Monday, resident Alin Boswell said he had been without power for eight days and hadn’t seen anyone from CenterPoint in his neighborhood until this morning. He said the city and the company should have been aware of the potential damage after May storms knocked out power to more than a million people.

“All of you and CenterPoint got a glimpse of this debacle in May,” Boswell told council members.

Ed Hirs, an energy researcher at the University of Houston, said the failures aren’t limited to CenterPoint. He said regulators have been reluctant to ensure that transmission lines are stronger and that trees are adequately trimmed.

Hirs said Abbott and other executives who are focused solely on utility after Beryl are looking for a scapegoat.

“Of course, none of them have a mirror around them,” he said. “It’s not just CenterPoint. The regulatory compact is totally in shambles.”

CenterPoint has filed at least 10 years of vegetation management reports with Texas regulators. In April, the company filed a 900-page report on long-term plans and spending that would be needed to make its power system more resilient, from tree trimming to storm and flood resistance to cybersecurity attacks.

In a report filed May 1, CenterPoint said it spent nearly $35 million on tree removal and trimming in 2023. It said it would focus its efforts this year on more than 3,500 miles (5,630 kilometers) of its estimated 29,000 miles (46,670 kilometers) of overhead power lines in 2024.

Vegetation management remains a key issue in preventing another power outage during the next storm, said Michael Webber, a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Texas who specializes in clean energy technologies. But it’s just one of the ongoing problems for power providers.

Policymakers must rebuild Texas’ energy grid to adapt to climate change, Webber said.

“We designed our system for past weather conditions,” he said.

The power company defended its storm preparations and said it had brought in about 12,000 additional workers from outside Houston. It said it would have been dangerous to preposition those workers inside the storm’s expected impact zone before Beryl made landfall.

In a message to CenterPoint customers Sunday evening, CEO Jason Wells wrote that the company had made “remarkable” progress.

“The continued pace of restoration is a testament to our preparedness (and) the investments we have made in the system,” Wells wrote.

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Lathan, who has worked in Austin, Texas, is a member of the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to cover undercovered stories.