“We don’t have anything to eat,” said Nelsey Alvarez, 34, a single mother from Honduras who said she’s never seen an energy crisis like this in her native country, where hurricanes are common. “If the power goes out, they restore it the same day.”
But Houston’s utility, CenterPoint Energy, was particularly vulnerable. Its grid is one of the most volatile in the United States, despite Houston’s hurricane-prone Gulf Coast location, according to data collected by the firm Whisker Labs, which tracks power outages from devices in ratepayers’ homes. Whisker found that even before the storm hit Monday, power outages in CenterPoint’s service area were more than twice as frequent as the national average.
“This was one of the most challenged grids in the country,” said Bob Marshall, CEO of Whisker. “This should be a shocking wake-up call. It was just a Category 1 hurricane, something Houston should have been able to handle. It could have been a lot worse. Yet 40 percent of the utility’s customers are without power in 100-degree heat and high humidity. It’s a terrible situation.”
CenterPoint officials said they had not reviewed the Whisker data, but they rejected the finding that their system is among the most unreliable in the country.
“Our system is in excellent shape,” said Darin Carroll, the company’s senior vice president of operations. “As far as this storm, it basically performed as designed.” He noted the speed with which CenterPoint was able to restore power to 1.1 million customers on Thursday and noted that hundreds of thousands more are expected to come online Friday and into the weekend.
But 500,000 ratepayers will likely still be without power early next week, Carroll said, a full week after the storm passed. Health and safety concerns from power outages quickly eclipsed immediate storm damage.
At least nine people have died in Texas and Louisiana after the storms, including those killed by falling trees, those who drowned after being trapped in vehicles in rising floodwaters, and those who were vulnerable during power outages. Now there are concerns that the power outages could cause more casualties as heat indexes climb into triple digits.
Gov. Greg Abbott (R), who is traveling to Asia on an economic development trip, called Wednesday for an investigation into why the Houston area has repeatedly suffered long, widespread power outages. Other elected officials also demanded accountability.
“People are angry,” said Houston Mayor John Whitmire. “I share their anger and frustration.”
It is becoming a familiar story in the United States.
One energy company after another is facing angry customers — and mounting lawsuits — amid failures to prepare for the extreme weather events that are becoming more common in the age of climate change. The slow pace at which utilities are upgrading their infrastructure is not keeping pace with the changing weather.
Utility company Hawaiian Electric is facing billions of dollars in liabilities over allegations that negligent management of its power grid fueled the Maui wildfire that killed 101 people last year. Utility company PG&E in Northern California Failure to follow wildfire safety measures forced the company to plead guilty to 84 counts of manslaughter and plunged into bankruptcy after the company’s power line sparked the 2018 Camp Fire, which killed 85 people and destroyed nearly 19,000 homes and other buildings.
“We have to be honest with ourselves about what the new normal is,” said Joshua Rhodes, a researcher at the University of Texas at Austin, speaking about the power outages in Houston this week. “People are overheating and people are dying. This was just a Category 1 storm. A Category 5 storm could hit us at any moment. We have to be better prepared.”
The headwinds to timely upgrades can be intense. There are battles over who pays, a regulatory structure that doesn’t always encourage the most rational investments, and shareholder pressure to prioritize profits. Some activists and experts are quick to point out that CenterPoint managed to put together a $37 million pay package for its former CEO in 2021 while failing to make what they call basic improvements for customers.
CenterPoint presented a sweeping, $2 billion “resiliency” plan to regulators this year aimed at strengthening the power grid against extreme weather events. The plan, which includes upgrading poles and wires, deploying technologies to reroute electricity when lines fail and burying some lines, is struggling through the approval process.
The upgrades, if approved by regulators, would take years to complete. The company and numerous stakeholders are now fighting over the cost of the plan and how much of it should be borne by taxpayers.
In the meantime, residents of Houston and the surrounding area face more misery every time a storm passes.
About 2.3 million of CenterPoint Energy’s 2.6 million customers in the Houston area were without power during the latest storm.
In some of the low-rent, multi-story brick apartment buildings that line the route from Interstate 45 to William P. Hobby Airport, residents — many of them immigrants — took refuge Thursday on sidewalks, in open doorways and outside the few convenience stores that remained open.
“The kitchen is not working. We can’t eat,” said Dillon Moreda, 20, as he charged his phone at a roadside outlet, something he learned when he immigrated to Texas from Ecuador two years ago. The textile factory where he works was closed because of the power outage, so he couldn’t afford to buy more food, he said. “No electricity, no work, so no money.”
He was shocked to hear that the power wouldn’t be back for another week. “A week?” he said. “That’s a long time!”
While cooling centers have opened in the region and the local bus company is transporting people there for free, Brian Murray, deputy emergency management coordinator for Harris County, is concerned that people are without power in their homes.
“We know there are residents in that situation; we just don’t know who they are or where they are,” he said. So far, the county has not received any reports of heat-related deaths, he said. “We’re hoping that doesn’t happen.”
Power outages had a major impact in southeast Texas, where 160 boil-water notices were in effect in eight counties and 135 wastewater treatment plants were offline, said Nim Kidd, chief of the Texas Division of Emergency Management. A dozen hospitals were in internal disaster states, he said, a designation that means routine hospital operations are at risk.
The Houston area was under a heat warning on Thursday, with high temperatures forecast to be in the low to mid 90s and humidity that would make it feel 10 degrees warmer. Temperatures are expected to be in the mid 90s every day for at least the next week.
“This heat is especially dangerous if you are without power and doing heavy work outdoors,” warned the National Weather Service’s Houston Weather Office. “Stay hydrated and use safe generator practices.”
Harris County officials sent out a wireless alert to residents Thursday asking them to be cautious when using portable generators after fire departments reported receiving more calls about possible carbon monoxide poisoning, Murray said.
Frustration with CenterPoint grew during what was only the latest electricity crisis: In May, a massive storm called a derecho also caused about 1 million power outages, some of which took six days to restore.
“It looked like maybe they weren’t as prepared as they should have been,” Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said at a news conference Thursday. “We’ll see what the facts are later.”