In the aftermath of Hurricane Beryl, Texas Sen. Phil King and other Senators were vocal in their criticism of CenterPoint Energy’s decision to lease $800 million worth of massive generators that remained unused. However, King sponsored most of the bills that made it easier for the company to acquire the generators.
“I feel like I’ve been taken advantage of,” said King, a Republican, during a hearing at the capitol last week. Other Senators also voiced the concerns that the deal was a “fraud” or that the investment was too large.
Senators claimed that they were notified that the generators CenterPoint was acquiring were not mobile and couldn’t be deployed to help hospitals and other emergency centers after Beryl left without electricity more than 2 million Texans. However, an investigation by the Houston Chronicle highlighted that the bills sponsored by King in fact were specifying these issues, and the legislation passed almost unanimously.
“The legislators are acting as if this is all new information for them,” said Sylvester Turner, the former Mayor of Houston. “Even with all the blowback on CenterPoint, CenterPoint is not the only culprit here. CenterPoint didn’t get to this point by themselves.”
In 2021, in response to the devastating effects of Winter Storm Uri, King, then a state representative, introduced a bill allowing utility companies to lease mobile generators to prevent power outages. The legislation passed despite warnings from experts and consumer advocates about the potential misuse of such a provision.
The bill that King championed lacked size restrictions on the generators and included provisions that made it difficult for regulators to scrutinize costs.
This opened the door for CenterPoint to lease large, immobile generators, despite their dubious effectiveness in emergency situations like hurricanes.
In 2023, before CenterPoint was approved to pass the cost of the generators to consumers, two administrative judges warned that there was lack of evidence and public testimony on the company’s process of acquiring the generators. They concluded that the company didn’t demonstrate that it needed so much generation capacity.
However, weeks after the ruling came out, King and Sen. Carol Alvarado, a Democrat, sent separate letters urging regulators to ignore the judge’s decision and approve the company’s investment anyway.
In the recent hearings, King claimed that the laws he authored were intended only to allow for smaller, mobile generators, not the large ones that CenterPoint acquired. This statement, however, contradicts the reality of the laws he helped pass, which lacked any such size limitations and actually facilitated the very situation he now decries.
During the 2023 legislative session, he introduced additional bills that made it even easier for CenterPoint to recover the costs of the generators from consumers, while simultaneously weakening the oversight capabilities of regulators and cities like Houston.
Now, King and his fellow lawmakers have called for a review of CenterPoint’s generator expenses. However, CenterPoint has already added $2.39 to the average residential sutomer’s monthly electric bill. While Senators are trying to distance themselves from the controversy, it is clear that their previous action laid the groundwork for this costly and ineffective solution.
“They either weren’t paying attention or knew what was going on and did it anyway,” Doug Lewin told The Houston Chronicle.
