After criticism of Hurricane Beryl, CenterPoint is purchasing smaller generators to help restore the grid

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Diving certificate:

• CenterPoint Energy has purchased generators ranging from 230 kW to 5 MW to help restore power in the event of future grid outages, the utility said Friday. Larger generators were of little use after Hurricane Beryl in July, leading to widespread criticism of the company's storm preparations.
• PA Consulting Group last week released an independent assessment of CenterPoint's preparedness and recovery efforts for Beryl. In its 77 recommendations, the energy supplier was recommended, among other things, to purchase smaller emergency generators. CenterPoint says it has completed 51 of the recommendations or is in the process of implementing the remaining 26.
• After the storm, CenterPoint launched a $5 billion Greater Houston Resiliency Initiative to improve the local distribution system. “We have heard the calls for change loud and clear and are taking urgent action,” Jason Wells, the utility’s president and CEO, said in a statement.

Insight into the dive:

Although CenterPoint has made dozens of recommendations to improve its storm posture, PA Consulting's analysis concluded the utility's handling of Beryl is on par with its competitors.

CenterPoints The preparation and response to Hurricane Beryl “broadly met industry standards and the overall recovery time was comparable to that of neighboring utilities,” the report concluded. Examples were cited where utility preparations, such as acquiring mutual support resources and quickly establishing staging sites and associated logistics, minimized recovery times.

Beryl caused “significant damage” to CenterPoint’s power infrastructure, primarily impacting the utility’s distribution system, the aftercare report said. The transmission system “proved resilient.”

The storm's impacts intensified as it hit Houston's most populated service areas, resulting in a high number of tree falls, many of them from outside utility easements, the report said. More than three-quarters of CenterPoint's overhead circuits experienced lockouts, leaving about 2.1 million customers without power.

Restoration from the storm took 11 days, which PA Consulting said was “significantly shorter than the 17 days it took the company to restore power after Hurricane Ike (in 2008) and on par with its competitors during the hurricane Beryl.” About 78,000 CenterPoint customers were still without power eight days after Beryl, the report said.

Customer sentiment “decreased from before the storm to after its impact” PA Consulting added. “This negative feedback is mainly due to the communication challenges Center point encountered during the storm.”

The PA Consulting valuation “is invaluable,” Wells said. “Their recommendations will help us make the necessary changes to achieve our goal of building the most resilient coastal network in the country.”

CenterPoint said it has already implemented 18 of the consulting firm's recommendations. The utility replaced its publicly available outage map with an improved tracker; revised communications strategies to focus on providing important information to customers; and acquired “additional smaller generators ranging in size from 230 kW to 5 MW to enable greater use of temporary generators at future events,” it said.

Criticisms of CenterPoint's response to the storm included its resources for emergency power generation, particularly the decision to lease 32 MW generators, which were not deployed after Beryl due to their size. The large units “will be used for transmission events such as load shedding or substation loss,” PA Consulting noted. “These larger generators were not compatible with the types of sites that required temporary power generation; None of these were deployed during Hurricane Beryl.”

CenterPoint said it is also “in the process of implementing” 33 other recommendations from the report, including expanding the use of automatic reclosing devices throughout its distribution system to automate restoration and increasing the use of composite poles that can withstand stronger hurricane-force winds . The utility said it was also revising its tree trimming cycle “to be more proactive and responsive to higher-risk vegetation.”

CenterPoint said it is evaluating 26 additional recommendations from PA Consulting Group “to assess what additional actions can be taken in the coming months … or as part of our long-term resilience efforts to be announced in January 2025.”

Recommendations under consideration include improving CenterPoint's tree replacement program, assessing the feasibility of a customer communications solution that can both send alerts and receive reports from customers across multiple channels, and implementing a system to collect feedback on the effectiveness of the company's communications utility company.