The Public Utility Commission on Monday launched an investigation into CenterPoint’s response to widespread power outages that continue one week after Hurricane Beryl swept through the region, Chairman Thomas Gleeson said.
The commission’s staff will recommend changes CenterPoint can make before the current hurricane season is over, Gleeson said, and it also will report back to Gov. Greg Abbott and legislative leaders in December on potential changes to state law that could help avoid lengthy outages after future storms.
“Part of our mission is to ensure that CenterPoint provides high-quality infrastructure, and I think it’s clear from the events of the past week that the quality of their infrastructure, their ability to maintain that infrastructure, and their communication with their customers has been called into question,” Gleeson said at a news conference with state and local leaders at NRG Arena in Houston.
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Gleeson said he has requested CenterPoint leadership appear again at the commission’s next public meeting, July 25. There are certain areas, such as the company’s communication with its customers, that warrant quicker action, he said.
Others will require legislative fixes. As one example, Gleeson said that other states have allowed utility companies more latitude in trimming and removing trees and other vegetation that could threaten power lines. In Texas, those companies only are allowed to perform such maintenance in the public right-of-way.
See here for some background. It’s not that I think the PUC is off base in what Chair Gleeson has identified. It’s that their track record doesn’t give me any reason to trust them. Plus, this stuff is mostly small ball. I’m sure we could do a better job with tree maintenance, but a lot of the problem, both with Beryl and the derecho, wasn’t about branches that should have been trimmed. It was about entire trees being uprooted and falling onto poles and wires, and utility poles and transmission towers themselves being knocked over. That’s going to require some amount of burying lines, in strategic locations, some amount of replacing existing poles and towers with stronger and more resilient ones, and some amount of better planning and preparedness. All of that will require a big investment, which shouldn’t come out of the hides of CenterPoint customers, and a lot better oversight. Get back to me when the PUC has fixed the grid, and then we can talk about these things.
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