Centerpoint promises improvements

HOUSTON – The Houston Chronicle reports that CenterPoint Energy plans to overhaul its power grid infrastructure ahead of the 2025 hurricane season, the Houston-area electric utility announced Monday, as it remains under scrutiny from lawmakers and regulators for its lackluster response to July’s Hurricane Beryl. The company aims to add 25,000 poles made of fiberglass or other material that can withstand extreme winds to its system, in some cases replacing poles made of wood, before June 1, 2025, according to Darin Carroll, who oversees its electric business. The utility also set a target of trimming or removing vegetation along 4,000 miles of power lines, Carroll said. CenterPoint has approximately 30,000 miles of aboveground distribution lines that directly deliver electricity to homes and businesses.

Carroll said CenterPoint had also committed to undergrounding more than 400 miles of power lines. About 46%, or 26,000 miles, of CenterPoint’s power lines are now underground. Asked if these improvements will be targeted for specific areas of Houston, Carroll said the company plans to conduct this work across the entirety of its customer base. “These storms are becoming more frequent, more powerful, and so we’ve got to change the way we play the game so that the grid can be ready to handle it,” Carroll said. Monday’s plan builds upon CenterPoint’s so-called Greater Houston Resiliency Initiative, a campaign the company launched after Beryl under pressure from Gov. Greg Abbott to be better prepared for the remainder of this year’s hurricane season. From July to August, CenterPoint installed more than 1,100 stronger poles, trimmed vegetation along 2,000 miles of power lines and launched a new outage tracker it promised would work during a major storm, unlike the tracker that was defunct during Beryl.