CenterPoint begins month-long effort to harden infrastructure against next major storm | Houston Public Media

CenterPoint Energy is taking the initial steps to harden its transmission and distribution system in advance of future storms. The moves come as part of a raft of fixes Governor Greg Abbott demanded while the hurricane season was still at its height.

As part of what it calls its “Greater Houston Resiliency Initiative,” CenterPoint said it will replace roughly 1,000 wooden poles with fiberglass ones by August 31^st. That’s just a fraction of a percent of the company’s 1-million-plus poles in the Greater Houston area.

“This is not something that’s going to be a short-term fix,” said Brad Tutunjian, CenterPoint’s vice president of regulatory policy. “This is a continuous process that we’re going to go out and assess our poles that need attention and get those upgraded to a higher-class standard for the higher winds.”

Also by August 31, CenterPoint will trim vegetation along 2,000 miles of threatened power lines. “We used AI technology and LIDAR, aerial imagery to identify the most at-risk areas to have the current vegetation that needs to be addressed,” Tutunjian said.

And the company will complement its vegetation control measures by automating part of the process of restoring power after storm-driven outages. Traditionally, when a fuse blows, the company must send out a technician to inspect the line, see if there’s anything that needs to be cleared, and then personally reinstall the fuse.

CenterPoint aims to speed up this process by installing 300 devices known as trip savers.

RELATED: With CenterPoint in the hot seat, Texas policymakers look to Florida which quickly restored power to millions after a cat 4 storm

“At times during storms,” Tutunjian said, “even though the area could be completely trimmed according to our specifications when you have extreme winds, it could still blow the trees into our lines to make contact. But when the wind slows down or it’s no longer a gust, it’s no longer on our line. So, what this does is this will just allow for that outage to take place momentarily and then reenergize the line, and then we don’t have to send somebody out there to replace the fuse.”

CenterPoint announced the moves just days after a July 31 deadline Governor Abbott set for the company to provide information on how adequately it was preparing for the next major weather event in Southeast Texas.

Tutunjian said much of the resiliency initiative stems directly from the company’s conversations with the governor. “We are determined to re-earn the trust of our customers and the community we’re privileged to serve,” he said. “And so, we support the actions by the governor, and we feel that, by doing the things we’re doing now, we will be able to be better prepared before, during, and after a next storm or hurricane.”