CenterPoint Energy Prepares for Heavy Rains on the Gulf Coast
CenterPoint Energy is continuing to track Invest a low-pressure system, called Invest 93L, as it moves through southeastern Louisiana. The utility is remaining focused on readiness. While major impacts from the system aren't anticipated in the Greater Houston area, the utility will maintain an enhanced staffing plan over the next two days to address any outages from potential thunderstorms, according to a July 17 update on X.
“CenterPoint’s meteorology team continues to monitor the system as it moves northward across the Florida Peninsula. Based on the latest data, the threat remains low for the Greater Houston area,” said Matt Lanza, CenterPoint’s manager of meteorology. “While we are not expecting major impacts, we will continue to assess the system and coordinate response efforts as necessary.”
As of July 16, CenterPoint Energy’s Meteorology, Emergency Planning & Response, and Electric Operations teams continued to remain vigilant and track the system, Invest 93L, as it moved along the coast of the Florida Panhandle.
At that point, weather models continued to project a low likelihood of the storm developing into a tropical depression or low-end tropical storm. While there is still a possibility of heavy rains and isolated showers, overall impacts to CenterPoint Energy’s Greater Houston service area are expected to remain minimal. Any weather impacts would likely be rain-related on July 18 and 19.
CenterPoint’s Summer Storm Readiness Plan
The actions CenterPoint may take to prepare and respond to storms this summer include:
- Mobilizing vegetation management workers: Deploying local and contract personnel to clear hazardous vegetation from power lines in the Greater Houston area ahead of storm landfall to prevent outages.
- Coordinating with government officials: Providing regular updates to federal, state, county and city officials about our pre-storm activities and readiness posture.
- Conducting outreach to critical care customers: Reaching out to identified Critical Care Residential and Chronic Condition Residential electric customers by email, phone or text.
- Sharing information and updates: Providing safety and preparedness information directly with customers via email, phone or text, across social media platforms and other channels to keep customers informed and prepared.
- Organizing additional call center staffing: Securing additional call center staff to handle a higher volume of calls during the storm and limit wait times.
Actions since Hurricane Beryl: Greater Houston Resiliency Initiative
Since launching GHRI following Hurricane Beryl last summer, CenterPoint executed a historic series of critical resiliency improvements across the company’s 12-county Greater Houston area service territory. The company completed the following actions:
- Installed or replaced more than 26,000 stronger, more storm-resilient poles built to withstand extreme winds;
- Undergrounded more than 400 miles of power lines to improve overall resiliency;
- Installed more than 5,150 additional automated reliability devices and intelligent grid switching devices to reduce the impact of outages and improve restoration times;
- Cleared more than 6,000 miles of higher-risk vegetation near power lines to reduce storm-related outages;
- Installed more than 100 weather stations across our service territory to improve situational awareness and storm preparation;
- Donated 21 backup generators to critical facilities across the company’s 12-county service area; and
- Launched a new and improved, cloud-based Outage Tracker to provide real-time updates on outages and restoration efforts in English and Spanish.
Important Weather Station Facts and Locations
CenterPoint has installed more than 100 weather monitoring stations ahead of the Atlantic hurricane season. The weather monitoring stations were installed in strategic locations across CenterPoint's 12-county Greater Houston area electric service territory. The devices take measurements every 2-5 minutes, including humidity levels, wind speed, temperature, and rainfall.
For more information on CenterPoint's GHRI actions and improvements ahead of hurricane season, visit CenterPointEnergy.com/