HOUSTON – CenterPoint Energy will be holding 16 open house events across the Houston area to elicit customer feedback on the company’s response to Hurricane Beryl, as well as what the company can do better in future storm events.
The events will be held over the next six weeks with the first being this Saturday, August 17, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Tom Bass Community Center at 15108 Cullen Blvd. in Houston.
Recommended Videos
“We have heard the calls for change, and we are taking action now,” said CenterPoint President and CEO Jason Wells. “As part of our commitment to improving, we are encouraging all of our customers to share their experiences during Hurricane Beryl, as well as their ideas for how we can do better.”
The company says during the events, customers will be invited to share feedback and ask questions of CenterPoint team members and leaders, visit a number of informational stations, and learn about and discuss the over 40 actions the company is taking to improve public communications, as well as strengthen system resiliency and emergency partnerships.
Attendees will also have opportunities to demo CenterPoint’s new Outage Tracker and sign up for the Power Alert Service to stay better informed about outages before, during and after a storm. Along with CenterPoint subject matter experts, local organizations will also be on hand to help customers to prepare for storms and create personalized emergency plans.
The full schedule for all the open houses can be found here.
The open house events are part of the company’s Greater Houston Resiliency Initiative. The company says, since launching on August 5, more than 2,500 CenterPoint frontline workers and contractors have together taken a series of targeted actions to strengthen the grid and reduce the risk of outages before the next major storm. These actions include:
- Installing stronger and more storm-resilient poles: CenterPoint is replacing approximately 1,000 wooden poles by August 31 with stronger fiberglass poles that can withstand winds up to 132 MPH.
- Trimming or removing vegetation from our lines: CenterPoint has doubled its vegetation management workforce in order to remove higher-risk vegetation near power lines by August 31.
- Installing automated devices: CenterPoint will install approximately 300 automated devices, known as trip savers. These devices mean that fewer customers experience outages, and quicker restoration times for those who do. The devices automatically re-energize the line in certain outages to help keep the power on for customers.