HOUSTON – CenterPoint has ditched its outage map on the backend of severe storms and just days away from the 2024 hurricane season.
The system became unreliable during the May 16 derecho storm when nearly one million customers lost power, according to the company.
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“So, as you know, we had a peak of over 900,000 customers that were out. We were seeing, you know, several hundreds of thousands of customers or hits to the page in a single hour. For instance, in one hour, we were seeing over 700,000 hits at one point in time,” Alyssia Oshodi, CenterPoint’s Director of Communications told KPRC 2 Investigates reporter Joel Eisenbaum. “And so the traffic was just too much. And so, again, we want to be able to test and bring up a replacement that functions properly,” Oshodi said.
Until that new tracking or mapping system is up and running, people don’t have a way to check and see where outages are occurring or track outages by address or area.
#Houston: Our Power Alert Service® provides the most up-to-date outage updates as they become available and matches what our agents are able to provide. Enroll to receive alerts via text here: https://t.co/jXkjjfIXmq pic.twitter.com/WGPkansQZW
— CenterPoint Energy (@CenterPoint) May 29, 2024
During Tuesday’s severe afternoon storms in the Houston area, between CenterPoint and Entergy, more than 370,000 customers lost power.
The battering comes nearly two weeks after close to one million people lost power from the deadly, derecho-driven storm.
CenterPoint called it a widespread event spread across Harris County with pockets of power outages in the north, south, and northwest areas of the city.
CenterPoint said although they couldn’t provide a timeline for when power would be restored, they have brought back additional help to speed up the process.
Although Tuesday’s storm wasn’t as powerful as the May 16 storm, CenterPoint said its crews were just finishing up restoring power to customers from the last storm before they were hit with another.
“Our crews are tired but we are working,” a CenterPoint spokesperson said Tuesday.
Latest power update
As of 7 p.m., Entergy Texas said 84% of its roughly 85,000 customers have had power restored. Approximately 13,720 customers remain without power.
As of 6:25 p.m. Wednesday approximately 22,200 customers were without power.
CenterPoint said more than 305,000 customers have had power restored since Tuesday.
“The company remains on track with its efforts to restore the majority of customers without power today, with some isolated outages in certain areas expected to extend into tomorrow. CenterPoint anticipates these remaining customer outages will be restored by the end of the day on Thursday,” the company said.
According to Entergy Texas, approximately 27,000 customers are without power as of 11 a.m., Wednesday. More than 38,000 customers reportedly had their power restored.
CenterPoint urges customers to always stay at least 35 feet away from downed power lines and damaged electric utility equipment. Treat all down and damaged equipment as energized and report them to the company at 713-207-2222.