I am still flabbergasted that Centerpoint has normalized the idea that doing line maintenance, cutting vegetation and hardening the grid infrastructure are all super expensive extras that will require massive cost increases. That should be their core mission, and profits need to go back into the company to pay for improvements and increased services and more staffing. The fact is that they are maximizing shareholder value at the expense of the customers, and we're seeing the real time effect of that. Does anyone here think that when this cleanup is done they'll be ready for the next big storm, which could come any time? We're headed into the worst projected hurricane season in 19 years and Centerpoint doesn't seem to have a plan, inventory or staffing in place. And I have zero faith that any politician from either party will do anything other than grandstand for social media.

CDUB98 said:

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Lt. Governor, Dan Patrick tried to get a hold of Hidalgo and she said, "we're good."

At least facts straight when ranting.

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Dan Patrick is a self-serving chameleon who doesn't even have the balls to go by the name he was born with. I'd take anything he says with a large grain of salt.

Have to hand it to the centerpoint marketing person though, by changing the outage map color of "restoration date pending" (I.e. we have no damn clue) to a greenish teal it looks substantially less offensive than if they had it in a red or orange or whatever it was

Yeah at least Lina works for the poor, unwashed, non-English speakers hiding among us in the darkness.

She's amazing. A modern day Mother Teresa.

Seems reasonable to require that no one that works at center point, lives in Houston area and makes over 500k a year get their power turned on until everyone else in Houston has power. Bet things would change real quickly.

Centerpoint has a lot of large industrial customers with strong lobbies and on site backup who want rates as low as possible. Cutting veg mgmt for residential customers probably factors into that. PUCT needs to be held accountable as well for allowing that.

RC_57 said:

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dBoy99 said:

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Yeah at least Lina works for the poor, unwashed, non-English speakers hiding among us in the darkness.

She's amazing. A modern day Mother Teresa.

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This is sarcasm…right?

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It definitely is, she is a complete azz clown and if you support her, you are too

Fitch said:

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Also, BURY. THE. DAMN. LINES.

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This would be monumentally expensive and probably not even realistic logistically. Are you talking all or most lines in the Houston metro and surrounding areas?

The posts about FL&P got me looking at what they do. They are burying lines when they can. They are working to harden the poles where they can't. They are dedicating crews to vegetation management. They also realize underground line are prone to problems with flooding, so they are looking to innovate with waterproof electrical lines. They are looking for ways to cordon off the grid into smaller pieces to reroute power during outages or turn off smaller circuits for repairs. And, yes, they are doing all this in Miami, too.

Where is Centerpoint's plan? Where is their innovation? Maybe it was deregulation, but somewhere Houston broke the infrastructure portion of providing electricity in the city. Something needs to change.

Quo Vadis? said:

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Bondag said:

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William Foster said:

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Fitch said:

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Also, BURY. THE. DAMN. LINES.

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This would be monumentally expensive and probably not even realistic logistically. Are you talking all or most lines in the Houston metro and surrounding areas?

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If service lines are being installed they need to be buried. If new or existing lines are overhead Centerpoint needs to maintain clearances. Trees are great, but not news houses or power lines.

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I read some sort of study that said that burying lines cost something like $9,000,000 a mile.

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The highest i've seen is $2.5 million per mile, and that was California, so probably extra high.

But realistically, if they prioritized the residential areas and got the lines buried that through people's backyards, the costs will be less, the risk of pipes, etc are less (and CenterPoint should know where most of that is since they own it), and that removes a major risk of trees damage. Then you are asking them to really maintain their biggest infrastructure.

That's what Florida did and they are significantly better at getting power back on than we are.

Wow.

"Bury the lines" and "tree trimming doesn't cost much"

I can't fathom how out of touch people are with basic tasks like this. I can't even wrap my head around the comments in this thread. There are a metric f ton of people who have never done any hard work of any sort and it shows.

Don't forget that Karen will eventually get her way, and you will all pay dearly for it.

$6 BILLION in profits buys a lot of maintenance and upgrades...

BrazosDog02 said:

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Wow.

"Bury the lines" and "tree trimming doesn't cost much"

I can't fathom how out of touch people are with basic tasks like this. I can't even wrap my head around the comments in this thread. There are a metric f ton of people who have never done any hard work of any sort and it shows.

Don't forget that Karen will eventually get her way, and you will all pay dearly for it.

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Can you fathom how much of a hit the economy of Houston has taken from business unable to open and people unable to work?

Can you wrap your head around this being something that is starting to happen every couple months around here?

Would be shocking to you, that in 3 years of inflation, the OPEX budget for CenterPoint has actually gone down?

Maybe do a bit of digging before you make comments...

Another one come to spout how things are expensive. So do nothing at all.

William Foster said:

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Fitch said:

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Also, BURY. THE. DAMN. LINES.

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This would be monumentally expensive and probably not even realistic logistically. Are you talking all or most lines in the Houston metro and surrounding areas?

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Sorry, you're getting a long answer but I'm fired up on this subject.

Yes, it would be expensive. But there have been how many of these multi-day to multi-week outages over the last 10 years? These will not stop and as the region grows the customer base and scale of outages is only going to get worse unless something fundamental changes with the infrastructure.

This is an entire conversation unto itself, but my $0.02 would be something like this:

• High power transmission lines stay above ground. It would be a major cost to move these underground and no real reason to since most are out of reach of trees. There are still transmission lines across the city which, unbelievably, are on wooden poles. Modernize these select lines to concrete or steel poles and raise the heights to 60+ ft above street level.
• Any time a road is being renovated, bury the overhead lines. Houston already has a practice of updating the storm sewer system and transitioning old asphalt to concrete paving when roads are renovated. Memorial Drive and Shepherd/Durham are recent examples where there was a phased approach to tear out the entire roadway and upgrade infrastructure. These are major thoroughfares and supply utility access to whole sections of the city - it warrants hardening infrastructure beyond just the wet utilities.
• Review major corridors' distribution lines and create a 10-year plan to move distribution lines underground, in conjunction with or absent any other road construction.
• Review neighborhoods which have existing underground electrical but are connected to the grid with overhead distribution lines - create a phasing plan to move these intermediate sections underground.
• Change the design standards for all new commercial developments and residential subdivisions to require underground distribution facilities. Disallow any new poles to be installed moving forward. (I'm a commercial developer - this would affect my industry directly, but we are equipped to handle costs like this more so than John Q. Public can when building a new one-off house).
• The City already requires ROW dedications or upgrades when new development warrants it - deeding additional land for continuous width ROW corridors, road paving upgrades, new medians, new signalization, etc. This is an established process on the books and there are even mechanisms in place for developers to recapture costs after fronting the initial construction expenses. Expand this to move distribution lines underground.
• TX Legislature creates legislation that (1) allows MUD's not already empowered with electrical utility powers to universally have right to install and (2) forms a coordinating agency between private utility providers and municipalities / MUDs that is also empowered to set minimum design standards on new construction. Give the people living in MUD's the opportunity to vote on installing underground facilities rather than live with whatever the original developer installed.
• The real kicker: transitioning the distribution lines in existing neighborhoods underground. This is necessarily a long-term project done over probably two or three decades and bonded out with proceeds from rate increases. I do not know how it could be done fairly or evenly across such a large metro as Houston, but one idea would be splitting the metro service areas into differential zones such that a rate hike only takes effect when infrastructure in that zone is scheduled to be replaced - the idea being to pair up cost levies with when new facilities are actually delivered, not just a blanket rate hike city-wide when it would take 20+ years to do the upgrades.

Edit to add: I had no idea centerpoint reportedly turned a $6 billion profit in 2023. Screw rate hikes - there's your funding for this stuff. The whole of the I-45 / I-10 / I-69 renovation around downtown is supposed to cost $11 billion, or two years of CNP profit. That is freaking insane and maddening.

Monopoly 101

If there is NO competition, then it is a monopoly. It shouldn't be a for profit entity but a Coop or pure Public Utility.

Allowing it to be for-profit is ****ing insanity.

The Centerpoint hate is completely justified.