CenterPoint draws state ire after Hurricane Beryl power outages. Here’s what you need to know.

CenterPoint earlier this year filed an application with the Public Utility Commission of Texas seeking to raise rates to cover costs and keep up with the area’s growth. Utility officials said the average residential bill would increase by about $1.25, according to the company filings.

Utility companies do not make money by doing maintenance like tree trimming or hardening powerlines, but by expanding infrastructure coverage, according to energy experts. But the PUC controls how much money a regulated utility like CenterPoint can make.

To make their case for a rate increase, CenterPoint officials said they now served 300,000 more customers compared to when the company last requested to change its rates in 2019. They expected both population and industrial growth to continue with a shift toward electrification and potential buildout of hydrogen production facilities.

Utility officials said in the filings that they were both expanding the system and keeping up with needed repairs. The company invested more than $6 billion in infrastructure over the past five years while also responding to “unprecedented weather conditions” including drought, winter storms and hurricanes.“Each event had its impact on the system,” said Lynnae Wilson, senior vice president of electric business. “Drought conditions lead to dead or stressed trees that are more susceptible to high winds. Any system damage as a result of weather events in turn caused customer outages.”

The company said it spent $31.9 million on vegetation management in 2022 and increased its spending on reliability projects.

“CenterPoint Houston faces increasingly high expectations from customers in terms of more reliable service and faster restoration following outages, and from regulators and policymakers increasingly concerned with strengthening the electric grid in Texas,” Jason Ryan, executive vice president of regulatory services and government affairs, said in the March 6 filings.

On July 17, after public outrage over Beryl’s mass power outages, CenterPoint requested more time to keep working through the rate case discussions with the other parties involved. Entities such as the Houston Coalition of Cities, Texas Industrial Energy Consumers and Texas Consumer Association were already weighing in on the proposed rate hike. An administrative judge considering the proposed increase requested that parties file status reports by August 2 and every two weeks after.