Hurricane Beryl fallout: Texas AG Ken Paxton launches investigation into CenterPoint

HOUSTON — Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has launched an investigation into CenterPoint Energy for possible violations during Hurricane Beryl. 

The energy provider has been widely criticized after widespread outages left millions without power and caused the hyperthermia deaths of at least 15 people. 

Editor’s note: The above video originally aired on Aug. 5

“The Office of the Attorney General is aware of allegations that CenterPoint’s conduct may have resulted in significant harm to Houston residents, including rate increases, outages, and lengthy delays in restoring power during Hurricane Beryl,” Paxton’s office said in a statement. 

The investigation will examine allegations of fraud, waste, and improper use of taxpayer-provided funds.

“If the investigation uncovers unlawful activity, that activity will be met with the full force of the law,” Paxton said.

RELATED: CenterPoint: Customers in the Houston area may experience hours-long outages as work continues to improve resiliency after Beryl

Last week, CenterPoint released a response to Gov. Greg Abbott’s feedback on their plan of action to reduce the risk of outages during the next major storm.

CenterPoint said they will accelerate their timeline to strengthen the infrastructure in the Houston area and to complete more than 40 tasks in total to strengthen the electric grid.

CenterPoint said they will also improve the company’s customer communications and emergency coordination before the next hurricane.

“We have heard the calls for change, and we are taking action now. This first phase of our Greater Houston Resiliency Initiative will focus on a series of targeted actions to immediately strengthen our infrastructure across our communities,” CenterPoint President and CEO Jason Wells said. “We know have a lot of work to do to re-earn our customers’ trust. This initiative reflects our commitment to become most resilient coastal utility in the country.”

RELATED: CenterPoint releases updated timeline to improve their hurricane preparedness and response after Beryl

RELATED: CenterPoint’s new power outage tracker map now live online

Brad Tutunjian, VP of Regulatory Policy for CenterPoint said they agree with the governor on urgency and are “determined to be the best resilient utility in the Gulf.

“And so we recognize that it’s important to start these efforts now and that’s why we’re here today so we can show everybody exactly that’s what we’re doing. The proof is in the pudding. We’re out here to meet those demands,” he said.

Tutunjian said this is all part of a plan to reestablish the “trust” with customers and get their system “more resilient.”

“We’re also adding the best in class customer communications. We’re going to prove the resiliency of our infrastructure,” he said.

RELATED: CenterPoint withdraws request to raise customer rates

CenterPoint said that over the remainder of August, more than 2,500 frontline workers and contractors will be:

• Installing stronger and more storm-resilient poles: CenterPoint said it will be replacing approximately 1,000 wooden poles by Aug. 31 with stronger fiberglass poles that can withstand winds up to 132 mph.
• Trimming or removing vegetation from power lines: CenterPoint said it has doubled its vegetation management workforce in order to remove higher-risk vegetation near power lines by Aug. 31.
• Installing automated devices: CenterPoint said they will install approximately 300 automated devices, known as trip savers. CenterPoint said 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.

“We share the governor’s urgency around hurricane preparedness and increased resiliency of the grid and are committed to completing these critical actions on an accelerated timeline,” Wells said. “The actions we are taking this month are just the beginning. We want to exceed the governor’s and our customers’ expectations and improve in every aspect of our emergency response – before, during, and after any future storm or hurricane.”

CenterPoint said they have already met 15 of the 40 actions as part of their plan and would be providing updates on their progress.

Here is what they say has either been completed or is in progress:

• As of July 16, there are now approximately 1,000 vegetation management workers working to immediately address higher-risk vegetation issues through Aug. 31 and beyond. This action of increasing workers is completed. Vegetation work is underway.
• By Aug. 1, they will begin to use new state-of-the-art predictive modeling and AI technology to identify higher-risk vegetation across their system.1 This action is completed.
• They will remove 100% of vegetation from the 2,000 incremental distribution line miles with higher-risk vegetation across their system by Aug. 31.
• By Aug. 15, they will re-emphasize their “Right Tree – Right Place” program to further educate the public and communities about the impact of trees on powerlines.

RELATED: KHOU 11 Investigates: How much did CenterPoint spend on tree maintenance last year?

• They will hire a new senior leader for emergency preparedness and response and will seek to have someone in place as quickly as possible.
• They will immediately appoint a resource commander whose sole responsibility will be to develop and adjust a storm resource plan to efficiently dispatch resources. This action is completed.
• By Aug. 9, they will coordinate more closely with local, county, and state officials as well as emergency management personnel to align response efforts and more effectively dispatch temporary generation resources.
• By Aug. 31, or five days before the next tropical storm hits their service area, whichever occurs first, they will implement changes to their restoration process to accelerate dispatch of vegetation crews as soon as safely practicable after a storm based on damage modeling.

• By Aug. 1, they will complete visual inspections on all overhead distribution circuits impacted by Hurricane Beryl to identify equipment or vegetation-related issues that could create future outages. This action is completed.
• By Aug. 15, they will complete aerial imagery on all overhead distribution circuits impacted by Hurricane Beryl to identify equipment or vegetation-related issues that could create future outages.
• By August 15, informed by the completion and analysis of their inspection, they will execute identified repairs based on risk. This work will be completed by Aug. 31.
• They will design all new distribution structures and replacements to standards that address extreme wind and loading conditions.
• By Dec. 31, they expect to harden nearly 350 distribution line miles to the latest extreme wind standard on a reliability-risk basis.
• By Aug. 31, they will strategically deploy at least 300 automated devices to reduce sustained interruptions in major storm events and reduce restoration time.
• By Aug. 31, 100% of the remaining distribution poles planned for replacement will be replaced with composite poles (approximately 1,000 poles).

• With immediate effect, given the uncertain impacts of severe weather, they will use a 25% resource buffer as part of their response resourcing model to help ensure they request more than the number of crews they need to respond to any power outages after a major storm. This action is completed.
• By Aug. 31, or five days before the next tropical storm hits their service area, whichever occurs first, based on damage modeling, they will dispatch appropriate crews as soon as safely practicable after a storm to speed restoration.
• By Aug. 31, or five days before the next tropical storm hits their service area, whichever occurs first, they will begin using predictive modeling tools to inform resource planning to prepare for a major storm.

• Immediately, they will develop expanded staging site housing for four strategic locations to minimize travel time. This action is completed.
• By Aug. 31, or 5 days before the next tropical storm hits our service area, whichever occurs first, they will leverage damage models to identify locations for staging sites to increase proximity to hardest-hit areas so that workers can be deployed quickly.

• Their restoration strategy already prioritizes at-risk Texans in critical care facilities, and their focus is on incremental generation to bridge the gap between outage and restoration. 
• By Aug. 1, they will increase on a short-term lease basis small increment (up to 1MW) mobile generation from 4 to 13 units. This action is completed.
• By Aug. 9, they will brief trade associations for critical care facilities and confirm contact information for their members in our territory. They will also provide information about the availability of resources provided by FEMA to ready their facilities to accept temporary generation.
• By Aug. 9, they will engage with local Emergency Management Offices (or similar) to refresh their prioritization and to confirm contact information and emergency preparedness of critical facilities and critical infrastructure.
• By Aug. 31, or five days before the next tropical storm hits our service area, whichever occurs first, they will evaluate the expansion of the number of temporary generation units, and temporary generation transportation assets in their fleet, informed by the needs of critical facilities.
• They will donate up to 10 backup generator facilities across their communities in coordination with needs identified by local leadership. Sites will be selected by Sept. 30, and backup generators installed and operational by June 1, 2025.

• They are currently conducting community listening sessions, which have begun to inform elements of this plan, and will be hosting open house-style listening sessions in every county they serve in August and September. 
• They will continue to meet with their customers and listen to their feedback on how they can communicate more clearly and effectively and they will act on their recommendations.

• They will hire a new senior leader with deep communications expertise to ensure that they execute the overhaul of their communications approach effectively and will appoint someone as soon as possible.

• They will launch a new cloud-based outage tracker by Aug. 1, which is designed to accommodate user traffic during a major storm event. This action is completed. 
• The new outage tracker will allow customers to see outages by county, city, and zip code and will be mobile-friendly and ADA-accessible. This action is completed.
• By Aug. 15, they will launch a plan to engage with community focus groups to get feedback on their outage tracker and work to incorporate this feedback to improve the customer experience.

• They will use the outage tracker to update customers on their expected restoration date soon after they are able to determine restoration expectations. This action is completed.
• Effective immediately, 100% of impacted customers will have an estimated time for restoration for the entire system within 24 hours of a tropical storm exiting our service area, and they will update their estimated time for restoration at least daily thereafter. This action is completed.

• Effective immediately, they will launch initial public communications earlier in the storm cycle and establish a robust daily cadence of public communications planning, assessment, and execution. This action is completed. 
• By Aug. 1, they will adopt a policy of holding daily press briefings to communicate their preparation efforts if a named storm is expected to hit the Gulf Coast area and provide a daily restoration update during these briefings following a major storm event. This action is completed.
• They have retained emergency response communications experts to develop an emergency preparedness and response communications playbook by Aug. 9. This plan is focused on communicating earlier, more frequently, and more widely throughout the storm cycle.
  

• By Aug. 15, they will be able to increase our call center capacity by 165% for storm events with a standard average speed of answer of 5 minutes or less. This action is completed.
• By Aug. 9, they will re-train their call center agents so that they are equipped to address customer questions satisfactorily.

• By Aug. 9, they will launch campaigns to enroll their customers in Power Alert Service, their text alert service, so that they can push out real-time updates to their mobile devices as information becomes available.
• By Aug. 9, they will scale up the capacity for their Power Alert Service so that it can accommodate increased use expected during a major storm event.

• Beginning on August 1, we will launch their community education program to help explain how they are preparing for major storm events, how theirr restoration process works, and what they can do to prepare. This action is completed.