Residents affected by Beryl’s lingering outages can give feedback to regulator Saturday – Houston Public Media

AP Photo/Maria Lysaker

Houston residents affected by Hurricane Beryl and the shortcomings of CenterPoint’s response will have an opportunity to voice their concerns to the state’s Public Utility Commission on Saturday.

The Public Utility Commission of Texas, under the direction of Governor Greg Abbott, launched an investigation into CenterPoint’s response to Hurricane Beryl earlier this year.

“When [CenterPoint] decided to get into the public utility business, they entered a compact with their customers that they would provide high-quality service because utility service of electricity is important to every Texan and every Texas business,” Thomas Gleeson, Texas PUC chairman said in a press conference after the hurricane.

RELATED: Public Utility Commission of Texas launches investigation into CenterPoint Energy after Hurricane Beryl

For Houstonians without power, days turned into weeks as dozens of residents died from heat-related illnesses after the hurricane passed. More than 2.2 million customers lost power after the storm hit.

The company launched a three-tier resiliency plan to improve its infrastructure and strengthen communications ahead of the next hurricane. But the Public Utility Commission’s investigation is still ongoing.

Houston Mayor John Whitmire in a letter to the commission requesting the utility commission include the City of Houston in the investigation process.

“Despite several years and multiple intervening electricity rate increases that were purported to ‘harden’ the transmission and distribution systems that serve our region, a Category 1 storm crippled these systems,” he said.

CenterPoint’s first phase of the resiliency plan included the launch of a new cloud-based outage tracker and the use of artificial intelligence technology to identify high-risk vegetation.

The second phase launched on Sept. 30 to install 25,000 new poles, remove or trim 4,000 miles of high-risk vegetation, and install 4,500 automated reliability devices.

The public utility commission’s Houston meeting will be held Saturday at 9 a.m. in the Ronald Reagan Building of the Harris County Department of Education, 6300 Irvington Blvd.

Attendees are invited to participate in the workshop and provide public comments on their experiences during the storm.

“These proceedings are critically important because the outcome of the PUC’s investigation will inform whether, how, and to what extent all electric utilities in Texas will implement resilience and reliability measures for the regions they serve,” Whitmire said in the letter.