CenterPoint Energy Inc.

12/26/2024 | Press release | Distributed by Public on 12/26/2024 12:13

Holiday Severe Weather Round Two: CenterPoint Energy teams restored 50,000 Greater Houston-area customers over Christmas Eve and Christmas Day

Holiday Severe Weather Round Two: CenterPoint Energy teams restored 50,000 Greater Houston-area customers over Christmas Eve and Christmas Day

Thursday-December-26-2024

Houston - Dec. 26, 2024 - Even while CenterPoint Energy crews finished restoring approximately 50,000 customers whose power was knocked out by severe thunderstorms overnight Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, the company's emergency response and operations personnel continued to actively monitor potentially severe weather projected to impact parts of the Greater Houston area later today. The company continues to keep crews mobilized and resources deployed across its system and is prepared to respond to impacts to this approaching weather system. The greatest likelihood for severe weather is this afternoon and into the early evening. CenterPoint has a plan in place to quickly dispatch additional crews to assist with restoration efforts, if necessary.

CenterPoint's recently enhanced Emergency Response and Preparedness team continues to lead the company's preparedness efforts and coordination with public agencies and partners. The team is providing regular updates to relevant agencies and city officials to communicate the company's pre-storm activities and readiness posture and provide critical updates.

"For the second time in three days, we are tracking the potential for severe weather that could impact the Greater Houston area this holiday season. We're continuing to keep a close watch on the potential for thunderstorms, high winds and even lightning that could cause some targeted outages. We will continue to remain on alert for our customers and communities and will coordinate with our operations and customer teams to bring to bear the resources and response needed for any homes or businesses that may be impacted," said Matt Lanza, CenterPoint's Meteorology Manager.

CenterPoint Preparedness Actions
​Steps the company is taking to prepare and respond to the potential holiday severe weather include:

  • Executed its enhanced staffing plan: The company utilized predictive analysis based on similar storm events to enhance staffing plan for readiness in the event of system impacts.
  • Activating additional frontline electric crews: Readied additional local full-time and contract frontline workers to help with the storm response across the Greater Houston region.
  • Pre-staging additional material and equipment: Operations team has prepared additional inventory for deployment in the event of damage to poles and other equipment.
  • Sharing customer communications: Sharing safety and preparedness actions with CenterPoint customers across social media and other platforms to help keep customers informed and prepared.
  • Preparing to conduct patrols and assess damage: Once storms exit the area and it's safe to do so, CenterPoint crews will be deployed across its service territory to assess damage.

Outage Tracker
Customers can also stay up-to-date on outages with CenterPoint's new and improved Outage Tracker. Since Hurricane Beryl earlier this year, CenterPoint has made the following upgrades to its online outage tracker:

  • Improved reliability: The Outage Tracker uses cloud-based technology, allowing it to be scalable for growth and accessible during periods of high demand.  
  • Timely, consistent updates: The data in Outage Tracker is updated every five minutes to provide the most up-to-date details on outages.
  • Weather information: The Outage Tracker features weather conditions. The weather function can be used to better understand how weather may be impacting the system and affecting outages.   
  • Mobile friendly: Displays the information in an easy-to-read format on a phone or tablet.   
  • Summary reporting: Users can view a summary of outages by county, city and zip code to better understand regional impact.  
  • Estimated restoration feature: The estimated restoration feature in the outage description pop-up box provides the estimated time of restoration (ETR) for the impacted outage area.   
  • Satellite view: The option to switch from a default "street view" to a "satellite view" is available in the layers section of the left side bar. This option can help users better understand the vegetation density in their areas that may affect outages.

In addition, CenterPoint has recently released a Spanish-language version of the Outage Tracker.

Power Alert Service®
CenterPoint electric customers are encouraged to enroll in the company's Power Alert Service® to receive outage details, estimated restoration times and customer-specific restoration updates via phone call, text or email.

CenterPoint encourages all customers to have a plan to stay safe
CenterPoint is encouraging all of its customers to prepare and have a plan to stay safe. Customers can get storm-related electric, natural gas and flooding safety tips at CenterPointEnergy.com/StormCenter.

For the latest updates, follow CenterPoint on X (formerly Twitter) for real-time updates.​