Gov. Greg Abbott called for an investigation into CenterPoint Energy’s response to Hurricane Beryl nearly a week after the storm left more than two million Texans without power.
“Power companies along the Gulf Coast must be prepared to deal with hurricanes, to state the obvious,” Abbott said after returning from his business trip to Asia.
CenterPoint Energy has restored power to about 2 million customers since the storm hit on July 8. However, the slow recovery pace has drawn criticism over whether the utility was adequately prepared for the storm.
According to the Houston Chronicle, about 255,000 customers were still without power on Monday, and the company said more than 40,000 were likely to remain without power past Wednesday.
Abbott said he would send a letter to the Public Utility Commission of Texas requesting an investigation into the prolonged restoration efforts and measures to prevent future outages.
The governor argued that CenterPoint “has repeatedly failed to deliver power to its customers.”
“To help Texans in the Greater Houston area and to avoid a repeat of unacceptable power outages, I will give CenterPoint until the end of the month to provide my office with specific actions to address power outages and reduce the possibility that power will be lost during a severe weather event,” Abbott wrote. “If CenterPoint fails to comply, I will issue an Executive Order to impose actions on the company that are geared to keep the power on.”
Abbott also said CenterPoint must detail its plans to remove vegetation that threatens the power line, how it will prepare in advance of each tropical storm and how it will prepare crews for future outages.
This hurricane season is expected to end in November, so preparation is important to minimize damage from future storms.
Following Abbott’s news conference, CenterPoint stated that its top priority was restoring power to the remaining affected customers and highlighted that it had brought in about 12,000 additional workers from outside Houston to address the power outages. The company argued that prepositioning those workers within the predicted storm impact area would have been unsafe.
