I remember seeing workers in my backyard trimming trees that had overgrown into powerlines. It's gotta be at least 15 years, if not 2 decades, since the last time they came out.
Up here the PEC comes out about every other year. Gotta be careful with live oaks...no idea if it's around Houston but "oak wilt" is a tree killer. You have to sanitize your chainsaw constantly (bleach water), and the rule of thumb is only touch your oaks when it's really hot or really cold (winter and summer, when they're not in active growing mode)
Is it true what I'm hearing that a lot of the out of state contractors were delayed in getting deployed because CP was/is still negotiating their wages? If true that is pretty damn terrible, not because it's unreasonable for the sides to have to come to an agreement before starting work, that is to be expected, but it shows lack of preparedness for not have standing contracts in place and ready ahead of time. If CP does not have contracts with outside help ready to go in a market like Houston, that is just flat out incompetent.
Keep your socialist hands off of my Medicare power grid! It's not like CP doesn't have the financial ability to do these things all by themself.
I can tell you they are all trimmed down in here in Fort Bend County where I am.. just to many actual trees fell on lines and houses. I don’t know if Centerpoint actually does that or local gov’t. I’ve counted 9 houses in my area that have trees on them or in them.
Not true per my source. Source: “Man the public is running with any rumors they hear.. not true man.. I have 800 at my site and they left to start working this morning. They are getting paid the second they start driving here from out of town so not sure how this got started. As for lodging, there isn’t many hotels available. We have set up man camps which is trailers with beds, showers and restrooms on site. If they dont want to stay there, they have to look for their own hotel.”
https://spacecityweather.com/ Houston deserves a much better electricity distribution system July 12, 2024 at 7:39 am by Eric Berger Is this CenterPoint’s ERCOT moment? Three and a half years ago nearly everyone in Texas had a bogeyman for the power issues that bedeviled the state during the Valentine’s Freeze of 2021. More than 4.5 million homes and businesses were left without power, and at least 250 people were killed directly or indirectly by the freeze. Property damages in the state approached $200 billion when “rolling” blackouts never actually rolled. It was a disaster—both natural and manmade. The underlying issue was power generation, in particular the failure of power plants under extremely cold conditions, and an insufficient supply of natural gas for power plants. The reasons for this lack of preparation are complex, and partly political. The bottom line is that the organization tasked with supplying the vast majority of the state’s electricity and managing the grid, ERCOT, received the majority of the blame. This led to a reckoning for ERCOT and, at least theoretically, reforms that will prevent future issues. So far, so good. The failure of Houston’s power grid during the derecho in May and, most recently Beryl, is a distribution issue rather than a generation issue. There was plenty of power available, it just could not be delivered to residents. There are three electricity distributors in the Houston region: CenterPoint, Texas-New Mexico, and Entergy. However by far the largest distributor is CenterPoint, which has drawn the lion’s share of angst and anger since the outages began early on Monday morning. Let’s face it, being without electricity, especially in the middle of July in Houston, is absolutely miserable. We have been pretty clear here at Space City Weather that the region should not have experienced such widespread outages. Beryl knocked out electricity to more customers than Hurricane Ike did in 2008. At Beryl’s peak, 85 percent of CenterPoint customers lost electricity. This matters because Ike was much larger and more powerful than Beryl, and brought hurricane-force sustained winds across large chunks of the Houston metro area. I’m not saying Beryl wasn’t a nasty storm, but its winds were quantitatively, and significantly, less than those of Ike. I am far from an expert on the distribution infrastructure that delivers power into homes. It is complex, and I salute the linemen working long hours to restore service. However, Houston’s electricity distribution system is not working. It is failing us. Many residents have now experienced two prolonged outages in three months. I realize that CenterPoint can no more control the weather than I can. But after Hurricane Ike our system should have been hardened for future similar (and lesser events, like Beryl). I realize there are no easy solutions, but there are things we should be studying and the implementing, such as concrete poles, underground lines, microgrids, and other ideas. Whatever company officials and politicians say in the coming days, the harsh reality is that our transmission system failed the Beryl test. Badly. And if we do nothing it will happen again and again. Just as ERCOT faced a reckoning after the great freeze, our distributors need a reckoning after Beryl. The status quo, and political leaders who enable it going forward, are unacceptable. What we have seen this week is unsustainable for a city that bills itself as the energy capital of the world.
It's clear what I'm trying to say if you remember Houston had a random ass derecho two months ago. I guess centerpoint and others forgot about that thing It's funny the people saying "everyone should have been prepared and have a generator" are the same ways giving centerpoint an excuse
If they just came out and said it and committed to it: "over the next several years we're going to spend $Xmillion to do the best storm-proofing we can", I think most people would say "yeah, I'll pay an extra dollar or two a month"
