As of Monday morning, more than 293,000 customers were without power across Texas, and more than 260,000 of those are CenterPoint customers, according to PowerOutage.us.One week after the landfall of Hurricane Beryl, hundreds of thousands of people in Texas still have no electricity while dealing with intense heat and humidity.Texas Gov.
The governor singled out CenterPoint as having “repeatedly failed to deliver power to customers for extended periods,” and said he planned to send a letter to Public Utilities Commission chairman Thomas Gleason requiring the commission to investigate the reasons for CenterPoint’s failures and how to fix the issues.
“CenterPoint is responsible for eliminating the vegetation before a hurricane hits,” Abbott said. “Some reports show that CenterPoint spends far less per customer on vegetation removal than some other power providers.”Abbott also noted the company claimed to have assembled thousands of additional linemen and other personnel to speed up the recovery process. However, he said some reports said many of those workers were slow to respond for various reasons.
“Maybe they have too large of an area for them to be able to manage adequately. It’s time to reevaluate whether or not CenterPoint should have such a large territory,” Abbott said.