State Affairs committee looks into power outages after Hurricane Beryl
HOUSTON, Texas - Hurricane Beryl is gone and most of the power line repair work is done in Houston. But the fallout continues on why the lights went out.
On Wednesday, members of the House State Affairs Committee brought back the CEO of CenterPoint Energy, Jason Wells, who issued another apology for how the power provider responded to the power outage.
Committee members expressed their frustration with the answers they've been getting, especially regarding how power poles are maintained.
It was revealed during the hearing that CenterPoint utility poles are inspected by a company called Osmose. It was noted Osmose Utilities Services is the same company used by Xcel Energy to perform safety inspections on its power poles.
The company name first came up in April during a special state House hearing held in Pampa into the Smokehouse Creek Wildfire. Investigators, at that hearing, said the deadly wildfire was ignited after a power pole broke.
On Wednesday, the committee was told that 60% of the downed power lines in Houston were hit by trees out of CenterPoint's right of way. Those trees were not part of the CenterPoint vegetation reduction plan.
"That's probably something we need to talk about. Where we can go into private property when a tree or whatever meets certain criteria that needs to be removed. We will talk about that," said Rep Dean.
The broken lines, according to Wells, prevented CenterPoint from tapping into it's fleet of large mobile power generators. The units, acquired after the winter storm in 2021, are designed to help prop up the ERCOT power grid while also being a revenue generator.
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Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, in a social media post Wednesday, criticized CenterPoint’s $800 million lease deal, claiming it squandered rate payer money. During the State Affairs Hearing, when the generator issue and purchases of storage batteries came up, Wells denied the utility was more focused on improving its bottom line than protecting their power lines.
"At the time, we took incremental money out of the profits eligible for our shareholders to increase the amount of vegetation work. With the benefit of hindsight. There could have been more, but we did not limit ourselves to a budget or an amount that we collect in rates from customers. We made a purposeful decision to take money out of what otherwise would have been profits to make that incremental increase in vegetation management last year," said Wells.
The committee was told CenterPoint’s $800 million generator deal could have been done cheaper. But, state law only allows a lease and not a purchase, which Wells claimed would have cut the price in half. That restriction may be removed in the next session along with other reforms.
CenterPoint is planning to ask the PUC for a rate increase to cover repair costs, which is estimated at $1.2 billion. The plan is getting push back from lawmakers, and committee members indicated they will consider changes in how Texas utilities operate and expect them to get involved.
"I want to be fair about this deal. If there's something that you could have done more had we given you the right to do it, then you've got to tell us. If you could have done things better, tell us about that. ‘Hey, within our rights, we could have done A, B and C, and we messed up.’ Tell us," said State Rep. Richard Raymond (D) Laredo.
Wells told the committee more than 40 policy changes have been made, or are in the process of being implemented. The company is ramping up its vegetation management program and plans to bring a new outage tracker online by August 1.
Governor Greg Abbott is expected to have a report from CenterPoint before the end of the week, outlining how the power provider plans to be ready for the next storm.