News
CenterPoint Energy continues to monitor Invest 93L in northeastern Gulf
CenterPoint Energy’s Meteorology, Emergency Planning & Response, and Electric Operations teams continue to monitor the low-pressure system offshore of Florida’s east coast, now designated as Invest 93L, as it moves across Florida toward the Gulf.
According to current weather models, the storm is expected to remain relatively weak but could develop into a tropical depression or a low-end tropical storm before making a projected landfall in Central or Western Louisiana by the end of the week. Rain and localized flash flooding arepossible in the Greater Houston area on Friday and Saturday.
Should the disturbance continue to organize, gain strength, and if model forecasts align on a different track, CenterPoint will take further action.
“CenterPoint’s meteorology team continues to monitor activity across the Gulf, including Invest 93L as it moves westward across the Florida Peninsula,” said Matt Lanza, CenterPoint’s Manager of Meteorology. “We project a low likelihood that this storm could become a tropical depression or tropical storm later this week and are prepared to respond accordingly. Impacts to the Greater Houston area are currently expected to be minimal beyond some isolated heavy rains and localized flash flooding.”
CenterPoint’s summer storm readiness plan
The actions CenterPoint may take to prepare and respond to storms this summer include:
- Mobilizing vegetation management workers: Deploying local and contract personnel to clear hazardous vegetation from power lines in the Greater Houston area ahead of storm landfall to prevent outages.
- Coordinating with government officials: Providing regular updates to federal, state, county and city officials about our pre-storm activities and readiness posture.
- Conducting outreach to critical care customers: Reaching out to identified Critical Care Residential and Chronic Condition Residential electric customers by email, phone or text.
- Sharing information and updates: Providing safety and preparedness information directly with customers via email, phone or text, across social media platforms and other channels to keep customers informed and prepared.
- Organizing additional call center staffing: Securing additional call center staff to handle a higher volume of calls during the storm and limit wait times.
Actions since Hurricane Beryl: Greater Houston Resiliency Initiative
Since launching GHRI following Hurricane Beryl last summer, CenterPoint executed a historic series of critical resiliency improvements across the company’s 12-county Greater Houston area service territory. The company completed the following actions:
- Installed or replaced more than 26,000 stronger, more storm-resilient poles built to withstand extreme winds;
- Undergrounded more than 400 miles of power lines to improve overall resiliency;
- Installed more than 5,150 additional automated reliability devices and intelligent grid switching devices to reduce the impact of outages and improve restoration times;
- Cleared more than 6,000 miles of higher-risk vegetation near power lines to reduce storm-related outages;
- Installed more than 100 weather stations across our service territory to improve situational awareness and storm preparation;
- Donated 21 backup generators to critical facilities across the company’s 12-county service area; and
- Launched a new and improved, cloud-based Outage Tracker to provide real-time updates on outages and restoration efforts in English and Spanish.
Important weather station facts and locations
CenterPoint has installed over 100 weather monitoring stations ahead of the Atlantic hurricane season. The weather monitoring stations were installed in strategic locations across CenterPoint’s 12-county Greater Houston area electric service territory. The devices take measurements every 2-5 minutes, including humidity levels, wind speed, temperature, and rainfall.
For more information on CenterPoint’s GHRI actions and improvements ahead of hurricane season, visit CenterPointEnergy.com/TakingAction.
Sign-up for Power Alert Service to get updates about family and friends
CenterPoint electric customers are encouraged to enroll in the company’s Power Alert Service® to receive outage details, estimated restoration times and customer-specific restoration updates via phone call, text or email. Customers can add up to five additional email addresses or phone numbers to allow family and friends to receive outage information.
CenterPoint encourages all customers to have a plan to stay safe
CenterPoint is encouraging all of its customers to prepare and have a plan to stay safe during this week’s weather. Customers can get storm-related safety tips at CenterPointEnergy.com/ActionCenter — available in English, Spanish and Vietnamese.
Customers can also stay up to date on outages with CenterPoint’s new and improved, cloud-based Outage Tracker, now available in English and Spanish. The Outage Tracker is built to handle increased traffic during storms, is mobile-friendly, accessible, and allows customers to see outages by county, city and zip code.
For the latest updates, follow CenterPoint on X and visit CenterPointEnergy.com/ActionCenter.
Source: CenterPoint Energy
