FRIDAY: Q&A with CenterPoint Energy on mass power outages in Houston

HOUSTON – This is a Q&A session with CenterPoint Energy on Friday, May 18, 2024. Click here for an update from CenterPoint on Saturday.

You asked the questions. We’re getting the answers from CenterPoint Energy.

Watch and read the full interview with CenterPoint Energy on the status of restoring power to Houston-area homes and businesses after Thursday’s severe weather.

• LIVE power outage tracker: Here’s how to find out when your power might be back on in Houston

Here’s the full transcript of KPRC 2′s Gage Goulding’s interview with Alyssia Oshodi, the Director of Communications at CenterPoint Energy:

Gage Goulding: “Well, first and foremost, how’s everybody doing on your team? Everybody good?”

Alyssia Oshodi: “Everybody’s great. As you’ve seen, we’ve had some damage to our, facility downtown. And so to prioritize employees safety as well as our customers, we are not operating out of that building as they’re cleaning up the damage there. But, everyone’s safe and working hard to try and restore our customers as quickly as possible.”

Gage Goulding: “And I think the big question, everybody’s wondering when will my power be on? I know that’s a very loaded question. Right now, with what you all know, when is the timeline for that last customer to have their their power restored?”

Alyssia Oshodi: “It’s really too early to say that exactly right now. We saw significant damage to our system as a result of the severe weather yesterday. So we are still while we are actively out and have begun restoration, we are still doing an incredible amount of damage assessment as well. So that damage assessment is going to continue through today and into tomorrow as well. But we will start to get a better picture, as we continue and we’ll continue to provide the information we can to customers. And as we continue those restoration efforts, we have over 2,000 employees and contractors right now deployed who are assisting in those efforts with call, not another 4,000 line workers, as well as another 1,000 vegetation professionals to assist us in those efforts as well. So we are going to continue to, restore, assess and get our information out to our customers as quickly as we can.”

Gage Goulding: “Could you give me those numbers again on your staffing?”

Alyssia Oshodi: “Sure. We have more than 2,000 employees and contractors that are currently deployed, and they are performing that damage assessment as well as restoring. We have requested an additional 4,000 line workers, as well as a thousand additional vegetation professionals to assist us in those efforts through a mutual assistance perspective as well.”

Gage Goulding: “When you say it’s too early to tell. That’s usually not a good sign. Are we talking days or potentially a week or more? People just want some sort of answer, I know it’s almost impossible to guesstimate that right now. But could you give me a guesstimate on are we talking hours, days or weeks?”

Alyssia Oshodi: “Sure. Restoration has been steady, so at the peak. Right after storms came through yesterday evening, we were over 920,000 customers out through the night. We were able to make some steady progress and get down even further. Right now we’re sitting just under 700,000 customers, so we are making that progress. We do know that we have some areas of our territory that were harder hit than others. And so keeping that in mind, those harder hit areas are likely going to be looking at being out through the weekend, possibly into early next week. But our hope is that as we complete assessments and get a better sense of the repair work, that’s going to need to be done in some of these harder hit areas, that we will be able to provide more specific information to our customers right now. It’s still just too early to really frame that up quite yet.”

Gage Goulding: “And Thursday we were kind of in the thick of it on U.S. 290 when, traffic was ground to a halt, whatever that high voltage transmission line came crashing down on the, on the interstate there. And so I think it was 3 or 4 of those big metal towers. This isn’t one of those deals where you just, you know, drill a new hole in the ground, stick a piece of wood in there and drop some lines. This is, that’s that’s engineering and construction. Specifically on something like that I mean, what how do you restore power?”

Alyssia Oshodi: “So correct. So what you were describing, where the damage that we’ve seen to our transmission lines. And so that’s, that’s significant damage, as you’ve seen the way that those towers have been crumpled. And so, yes, it’s going to take significant work. We have, you know, over 100,000 customers that are affected just by the transmission line that was, impacted, by U.S. 290. And so it’s going to take time. We are going to have to rebuild these lines. And so what we can do, from an operations perspective, is to try to bring back customers, as we can. But again, with something like a transmission line down, that’s obviously going to impact a larger amount of customers. Transmission line, of course, is going to then step down, into our distribution. So we’ve got, we’ve got to do some major work before we can start bringing on those larger number of customers.”

Gage Goulding: “And I know y’all have some really cool ways to distribute the power. Is there a way to reroute around those areas while you have to, I mean, quite literally, rebuild the tower?”

Alyssia Oshodi: “I don’t want to speak specifically to the line, but yes, there are definitely ways as we are restoring that we can do, some switching by way of our system to try to bring on our our intent is always to try to bring on the greatest amount of customers at any time that we can. So we will definitely continue to look for opportunities to do that as restoration efforts continue.”

Gage Goulding: “Any idea how long it would even take to have one of those those big metal towers rebuilt? I imagine there have to be engineering and permitting and all kind of beautiful loopholes and jumps that you have to do to get it to be that guy. And yeah, I mean, I think that take months.”

Alyssia Oshodi: “I will say that it will not take months for us to restore the customers that are out. I can’t speak to a specific timeline to complete full repairs to the transmission line. But again, we we just appreciate our customers patience. We we recognize that, you know, it’s it’s a difficult situation. And just know that our crews are out working as safely and quickly as possible.”

Gage Goulding: “You just said something that you want to bring on the biggest number of people at a time that you can. Right? You want to make sure you’re targeting those spots that are, prioritizing those spots have the biggest impact. How do I know if I’m. On the on the short list, if you will. Is there any telltale signs that you know my neighborhood or, you know, whatever is on the priority list?”

Alyssia Oshodi: “No, there wouldn’t be a way. But again, as I mentioned, as we can continue the damage assessment and really continue to get our arms around the repairs that are needed for any particular area, we’ll continue to try to get more specific information to our customers. Keep keep looking for updates to our social media channels. I will post those updates via our website, as well as use Power Alert service so as we can get more specific information, we will use the channels that we have to communicate that to our customers, but we do appreciate their patience as we work through that.”

Gage Goulding: “We’ve gotten some calls from folks that had no power overnight. And then it came back on and you got it right. That was awesome. And then it went out again. What happens there? Is that a normal thing? Did they get lucky for a second? How does that happen? Whenever they get it, it goes out. Something sometimes happens several times.”

Alyssia Oshodi: “Yeah. And completely understand the frustration there. As we’re completing those repairs, there are going to be fluctuations in the outages. I believe there’s a chance of even additional weather that might impact the area. And that could be another contributing factor that would then cause some fluctuations. But again, we we continue to work, you know, customers, we we are definitely working as quickly as we can.”

Gage Goulding: “Is there any explanation as to how that would happen though? Like whenever you boot up or re-energize a certain thing, but do you find other problems sometimes that would cause a conflict?”

Alyssia Oshodi: “Yeah, a there could be a number of factors, never just one, but definitely a situation where we’re making repairs. We’ve been able to restore might find additional and additional repairs that need to be done to where we need to take some customers back down so that we can safely make those repairs. A variety of different factors. And especially when we’re talking about damage like this, we’re going to uncover damage to the system that we perhaps just weren’t aware of. We might have some areas that are not easily accessible. And so as we continue to to get into them, we might discover some more problems. And we know that for the greater good, we’re going to have to perhaps take some customers back down so that we can address a larger issue.”

Gage Goulding: “A lot of folks at home likening this to that of Hurricane Harvey. And Ike. From your standpoint in terms of damage to the power grid, does this, liken to that kind of damage.”

Alyssia Oshodi: “I think that every storm is unique. So, what we’re going to see, great number of outages, I believe more outages than what we have seen with what was the last hurricane to truly impact the area, which was Nicholas. But, every storm is unique. The damage that we see unique. Not every, you know, pole transformer substation is going to be impacted in the way it maybe wasn’t the last storm. And so, our our folks are incredibly trained and prepared to respond to whatever they encounter. We just need the time to make sure that we, we can address and that we’re being safe as we do.

Gage Goulding: “Do you have any cost estimates on the damage to your your infrastructure.”

Alyssia Oshodi: “Don’t have any cost estimates. And that’s really something that right now we’re not focused on. So we’re really just focused on safely, continuing to assess and getting our customers restored and communicating the information that we can to customers in the greater public. So no information on that at this time.”

Gage Goulding: “Anything else that you want to add in there that I did not ask? Anything that is really important for the customers to know at this time?”

Alyssia Oshodi: “I would just say, again, we we appreciate their patience. We are, not not even 24 hours in, and we’re working extremely hard to to assess and continue to restore. Please, follow us on X at CenterPoint for updates that we will post there. We’ll continue to use our our other channels to get information out to our customers. And we we are working as safely and as quickly as we can.”