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  • Houston Landing

    Step aside, Whataburger. CenterPoint releases power outage map of its own.

    By Miranda Dunlap,

    12 days ago

    https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?url=13oIho_0uLDoyMZ00

    CenterPoint Energy, the city’s primary electricity provider, released an interactive map Tuesday night that gives some insight into Hurricane Beryl’s impact on Houston.

    The map’s debut comes weeks ahead of its highly anticipated estimated arrival — CenterPoint spokesperson Paul Lock said Tuesday that the map would be finished “in the next few weeks” and likely wouldn’t be helpful for tracking Beryl restoration efforts.

    Access the Outage Tracker here.

    The energy company has lacked an Outage Tracker map since wiping it during May’s deadly derecho, during which over a million customers lost power. Officials said too many visitors to their site in May “overloaded” the map, causing “technical difficulties,” such as wrongfully indicating some areas had power while they remained dark.

    CenterPoint is responsible for the systems that deliver power to nearly 2.8 million Houston-area customers. When deadly Hurricane Beryl swept across the Houston area early Monday morning, it knocked out power to nearly 80 percent of their customer base, or 2.2 million customers.

    The lapse without neighborhood-level data has been a source of frustration for many CenterPoint customers, both in May and in the aftermath of Hurricane Beryl, as residents seek answers about areas most impacted and when their electricity will return.

    Lacking an official outage map after Beryl, frustrated Houstonians instead turned to Whataburger’s app as a proxy for power outages across the region. A social media user went viral after pointing out that their interactive map shows which locations across the city were closed after the storm, his creative solution sparking national attention .

    The official map released by CenterPoint Tuesday breaks service areas into three categories: areas with power, areas assigned to be repaired and areas still being assessed by the company. It also shows how many customers lost power in each ZIP code.

    The map does not indicate when residents should expect their power to be restored, though officials promised that their new tool would offer “the same level of outage information and functionality” as its previous map.

    That feature could be offered in the coming days.

    “As CenterPoint completes its damage assessment in the coming days, it will provide more detailed information about expected restoration timing,” a statement from the company reads.

    By 8 p.m. Tuesday, CenterPoint said in a statement that it has restored electricity to 850,000 customers, although its website indicates only 675,000 customers have had their power restored. They expect that figure to reach 1 million by the end of Wednesday, but have not yet provided an estimate for the remaining residents and businesses.

    “It’s going to be days,” Lock said. “I can’t give you a timeline, but it’s not going to be tomorrow.”

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