Christmas Eve Storm Update: CenterPoint Energy teams remain on alert, continue storm monitoring and preparations for potential severe weather threat for Greater Houston area

Christmas Eve Storm Update: CenterPoint Energy teams remain on alert, continue storm monitoring and preparations for potential severe weather threat for Greater Houston area

Customers and public encouraged to have a severe weather plan and use Power Alert Service and Outage Tracker tools to stay in-the-know over the holidays

Tuesday-December-24-2024

​Houston - Dec. 24, 2024 - CenterPoint Energy continues to actively monitor potentially severe weather projected to impact parts of the Greater Houston area today through Christmas Day. The company has been monitoring the weather, has mobilized resources, and is prepared to respond to impacts to this weather system. The company 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.

"We're continuing to keep a close watch on the potential for outages that could result from forecasted high wind gusts and lightning. While our 12-county, Houston electric territory remains at just a marginal severe weather risk, we are coordinating our operations and customer teams to bring to bear the resources and response needed for our customers and communities 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 holiday staffing plan: In addition to crews working through the holiday, 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: The 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 and Power Alert Service®

Customers can also stay up-to-date on outages with CenterPoint's new and improved, cloud-based Outage Tracker, which allows customers to see outages by county, city and zip code. The new tracker is capable of handling increased traffic during storms, is scalable during periods of high demand, and is ADA- and mobile-friendly. The data in Outage Tracker is updated every five minutes to provide the most up-to-date details on outages. Additionally, CenterPoint recently released a Spanish-language version of the tool.

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.