With electricity supplies still too low to restore service to all customers, CenterPoint Energy has adopted a new strategy, an executive said Tuesday afternoon: spread the outages.
The move aims to restore power to some customers who have been without it for nearly 48 hours, transferring sustained outages to those who have hitherto had service, said Jason Ryan, the dealership’s senior vice president for regulatory affairs.
“We have been focusing on customers who have borne the burden of this event since the beginning, starting around 1:30 am (Monday), and working on the list to transfer outages that have not yet done so,” Ryan said at a news conference. .
These new shutdowns, warned Ryan, are not the continuous blackouts that the dealership hoped to provide. Instead of brief blackouts lasting 15 minutes to an hour, the utility said customers who suddenly lose power should not wait for the lights to come on for 24 hours.
About 1.2 million CenterPoint customers are in the dark on Tuesday night, almost the same number as the day before. Less than 5% of interruptions were caused by the winter storm that swept through the region on Monday morning.
Ryan blamed the balance for the reduction in mill generation. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the operator of the state’s power grid, said this is due to the cold temperatures that diminish the capacity of Texas plants.
Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo urged ERCOT not to make overly optimistic predictions about when power could be restored to more than 4 million customers across the state.
She said Houston area residents should be prepared to go without electricity for a few more days, even after temperatures heat up, because power plants may need more time to recover.
“Whether you have energy or not now, there is a possibility of power outages beyond the duration of this time,” said Hidalgo.
CenterPoint has pledged to provide an update to the public each morning until full service is restored, said Ryan.
zHarris County Reporter