Will CenterPoint’s new plan prevent power outages? 3 takeaways from the Landing’s review

In Hurricane Beryl’s aftermath , many have trained their ire on CenterPoint Energy, eager to hear the electricity provider’s plan for preventing future widespread power outages during extreme weather.

CenterPoint officials have pointed to their $2.2 billion “resiliency plan,” about $1.5 billion of which will be spent on upgrading the electricity infrastructure that many have lost confidence in.

But a Houston Landing review of the company’s plan and interviews of industry analysts suggest the billion-dollar proposal likely won’t do enough to protect Houston from similarly catastrophic outages.

Here are three key takeaways from the Landing’s analysis , which published Thursday morning.

related to hurricane beryl

CenterPoint has a $2.2 billion plan for avoiding another power outage disaster. Will it help?

by Clare Amari, Miranda Dunlap and Jacob Carpenter / Staff Writers

1. CenterPoint would likely need to spend more to reduce outages during extreme weather

CenterPoint is facing increased scrutiny of its infrastructure — including the distribution circuits, transmission towers and street poles that carry power to customers — that failed during Beryl .

The company’s plan includes money for replacing transmission towers, upgrading or securing distribution poles and burying some power lines, among other improvements.

However, CenterPoint’s plans aren’t new. The company has spent at least $1.1 billion on similar measures since 2019, according to its proposal to the Public Utility Commission , the state’s utility regulator.

And despite similar upgrades in the past, Houston’s electrical infrastructure, as Beryl and May’s derecho revealed, remains vulnerable to major storms.

Industry researchers said CenterPoint would need to invest much more money to avoid major outages in the future. One researcher compared the company’s $1.5 billion plan for electricity infrastructure to “trying to charge a Tesla with a double-A battery.”

2. CenterPoint’s plan doesn’t include promises of how effective it would be

CenterPoint’s resiliency plan lacks specific details about how much the upgrades would reduce or prevent future outages. Company officials have mostly spoken in generalities about its impact, saying in an April press release that it will “reduce overall customer outage times” and “lessen the number of customers affected.”

The only quantifiable prediction comes from consultants who reviewed the plan. Their analysis, included in the PUC filing, includes an estimate that the upgrades would save 500 million “customer minutes of interruption.”

However, electrical engineers told the Landing the calculation lacks enough context to truly assess the plan’s effectiveness.

The plan also doesn’t reveal who would stand to benefit from the equipment improvements and where most upgrades would be located — which researchers said is also necessary to gauge potential impact.

3. Funding a much larger plan would be tricky

If the $2.2 billion plan isn’t enough to make a large difference in hardening Houston’s infrastructure, the question becomes: How would CenterPoint afford to do more?

Without any state or federal grants, CenterPoint expects to ask the PUC to approve a $3 per month rate hike for customers to cover the cost of the $2.2 billion plan. An even bigger spending package likely would require raising power bills even higher — an approach that would face resistance given widespread frustration with the company.

CenterPoint could ask state legislators for funding, but there likely wouldn’t be much appetite. State Sen. Nathan Johnson, a Dallas Democrat and member of the Senate’s Business and Commerce Committee, said legislators do not fund system hardening, but they could pass laws incentivizing CenterPoint to invest its money in equipment upgrades.

The pricey predicament means Houstonians will likely be left in the dark the next time extreme weather strikes.

“Three wicked storms hit Houston in less than two months,” said Michael Webber, a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. “The reality is, this is probably a preview of the future. It’s not an aberration going forward. So what have we got to do? We’ve got to harden.”