This was a thing for us growing up in unincorporated Harris too. the nicer areas right next to us had sidewalks and underground power lines my parents use to obsess over. it should be standard but in Houston unless it's some master planned community or a nice suburb, it'll likely be built to the absolute bare minimum standards. Cost is the number one reason why power lines aren't buried in most of houston
"They" say cost is higher but they bury water, gas, sewer, everything else. It doesn't make sense. It costs them less to run the line, maybe, but what about maintenance? We've had how many storms knock out power over the past 30 years? During Ike, I was without power for 3 weeks. Somebody is making good money doing these repairs. I understand if you are in a rural area where transmission lines must be overhead. But in the 4th largest city in the country, there is no way total cost decade over decade is cheaper. All these crews doing repairs are earning 2x overtime pay. I don't buy the "it's too costly to bury" lines argument. It's simply status quo and it's time for an upgrade.
I just got my power back on, so I am back to blame you for this. But since you posted, I knew it was coming and wised up and got a portable generator on saturday afternoon. So thanks for the heads up. I'm hoping it stays on...have heard some get it and then it turns back off, but that's OK, I at least got this part.
Finally got power back this afternoon. I don't have a generator, just haven't talked myself into buying one yet even though I've researched for years. I guess I been fortunate each event that I suppose I take it for granted. I've definitely dealt with the power outages you all have dealt with, but not for weeks, so it doesn't bother me as much. Overall, did have some windows leak which is a bit frustrating since this house is nearly 2 years old, but then again, I'm not surprised since builders tend to speed through building this houses which definitely compromises quality. My house has a 2 year warranty that I'll try to look into to see if these minor leaks can be fixed by the builder. At my rental home, my wood fence collapsed, so I'll have to replace that, I already had roof damage from the derecho in May, so just having to incur more costs, it is what it is. I definitely prepared for this storm, I could of done a little better, but we had water, food, and I bought ice bags to put perishables in a cooler. I also brought everything in on Sunday morning to prevent items from becoming airborne.
Not trying to make this a D&D thread, but in the last 30 years how has the Texas power grid improved? Has Abbott done anything to improve it also with votes and taxes? Every time there is severe weather our grid folds like laundry and millions are affected and some die. Create competition for CenterPoint, regulation? How do we rank vs other states? No judgment and I'm genuinely curious, also (although I was pretty prepared in comparison to others) I will take ownership for my part and will have a generator after this and never go through this again
To get better cell service/internet you need to turn off 5g and turn on 4g/LTE only. You can do this in the cellular settings for your device.
Our fiber at a houston property was down but is now back up. The cable modem service is still down - same company of course In austin Spectrum fiber is down in a lot of places too. Ineptness reigns.
The Heat might have fogged me up on this, but is it possible that Centerpoint is doing redirects when the load is heavy on their server(s) that reports outages? Example: Centerpoint has 65 days with heavy usage on their Outage Server(s) and 300 days of normal traffic. If they spec out their own server(s) to support heavy traffic, then they will have excess capacity for 300 days. If they spec out their server(s) to support normal traffic for 300 days and put in a redirect to something in the Cloud from Microsoft or similar for the 65 days of heavy traffic, they might have a lower overall bill than if they set up their own server(s) to support heavy traffic 365 days a year.
Don't know if this was already posted. Why can't Houston just bury its power lines? A Category 1 storm left over 2 million residents without power, and Centerpoint won't say when it will be back. By Brooke Kushwaha, News ReporterJuly 9, 2024 This past May's derecho weakened Houston's already fragile power lines, which gave out once again in the wake of Hurricane Beryl. For decades, oil-rich Houston has been known as the energy capital of the world. In recent years, however, the city has more often made headlines for its frequent power outages in both extreme and mundane weather events, from winter freezes to spring thunderstorms to summer heat waves. After Hurricane Beryl ravaged Houston and left over 2 million residents without power Monday, the city began to play a familiar song and dance with the energy provider, CenterPoint, slowly and incrementally interfacing with the company to restore downed power lines while residents endured a citywide heat advisory. The hurricane, only a Category 1, left many wondering how Houston, with all its power, could not keep on its own lights. On Monday evening, CenterPoint promised it would restore power to 1 million homes by Wednesday evening, with no clear timeline on what would happen in between or after. Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo said in a press conference Monday that the company had dispatched over 10,000 repair crews, but by Tuesday CenterPoint admitted to KHOU that most of those crews had not yet arrived. All the while, CenterPoint's power outage tracker flickered in and out of service, too, its map not having returned online since May's derecho, when nearly one million more lost power, many for more than a week. To get a clearer sense of the localized outages, some Houstonians turned to the Whataburger app. As of Tuesday morning, 1.7 million homes remained without power, according toCenterPoint's own power outage tracker. The third-party tracker PowerOutage.us, however, reported 2.2 million outages at the same point in time. CenterPoint did not respond to Chron's requests for comment. “While we tracked the projected path, intensity and timing for Hurricane Beryl closely for many days, this storm proved the unpredictability of hurricanes,” Lynnae Wilson, Senior Vice President, CenterPoint Energy, said in a statement Monday. Unlike past power failures, Houstonians did not lose power because demand outpaced the Texas grid's capacity, but because of blown transformers and the good old-fashioned rivalry between falling trees and aboveground power lines. Some, including Houston city councilmember Abbie Kamin, have called on the city to bury more power lines as a result, as cities such as Colorado Springs and Anaheim, California have done in response to their own extreme weather events. Buried power lines have an aesthetic benefit as well, although that has never been much of a motivating factor for Houston. Unfortunately, in denser cities like Houston, it's not exactly easy or cheap to bury power lines underground, although CenterPoint told KPRC 2 Houston earlier this year that approximately 60 percent of its Houston customer base is now served by underground lines. That still leaves tens of thousands of power lines aboveground, and similar projects in California and North Carolina have been estimated to cost billions of dollars over decades. Plus, once power lines are buried, they may experience outages less frequently, but they become harder and more expensive to repair once damaged. “The outages, if you have a fault or a failure in an underground cable, will be longer than the outages if you have it overhead,” B. Don Russell, a professor of electrical engineering at Texas A&M University, told KPRC 2. “Overhead it’s very obvious to find.” In areas with major infrastructure upgrades planned anyways, however, Kamin said the benefits of buried power lines far outweigh potential costs. "At what point does the cost argument remain sound when storm after storm after storm residents are put through this?" she asked. "It's not a one-size-fits-all approach...but in certain areas plans to bury the power lines helps." CenterPoint has already installed large, metal weather-resistant poles in Montrose, and in some cases received pushback for the amount that the elephantine pillars block public sidewalks. Measures like these are also necessary, Kamin acknowledged, as are measures to remove or trim the city's decaying trees that soon become hazards when faced with high winds and frequent severe storms. Some Montrose residents have also pushed back on a planned project to remove aging trees to make way for drainage improvements and a newly planted canopy—complaints that Mayor John Whitmire has heeded as the project remains on pause under his orders. One of those trees has since toppled. "The trees are stressed, which is another factor in this," Kamin said. "We need much more of a tree canopy to provide shade in rising temperatures and flood mitigation, but they need to be planted in a way that doesn't put power at risk." Kamin also blamed the state for not devoting enough of its multibillion-dollar rainy day fund to disaster resilience. "We have known for years since [Hurricane] Ike that minor winds can take out entire cities," Kamin said. "Whatever has been done since then is not enough." https://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/beryl-power-outages-19562834.php
Looked it up, with a quick Google search. This lists Texas as 28th in power grid reliability, so out of 50 states we're below average. Power Grid Reliability This metric reflects the number of minutes of power outages the average customer experiences in a year, based on data from the Department of Energy. Average total lengths – excluding major events – in a state can range from under an hour to multiple hours over the course of a year. https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/rankings/infrastructure/energy/power-grid-reliability
Don't sweat those leaky windows too much. Nothing is designed to withstand sustained head-on rain spraying your windows like that. It's not typical. I would just re-paint or touch-up paint for now (unless the warranty covers anything, at most they might reseal).
Confirmed, our grid is trash. This is unacceptable, people are dying from this each year. Texas had the most power outages in the country in last 5 years, new report finds Texas experienced more power outages than any state in the country from 2019 to 2023, according to a report from Payless Power analyzing Department of Energy data. Jason Fochtman/Staff photographer As the nation’s energy capital, it’s no surprise Texas ranks first in many energy-related metrics. One of those, unfortunately, turns out to be the number of power outages across the country over the last five years. There have been 263 power outages across Texas since 2019, more than any other state, each lasting an average of 160 minutes and impacting an estimated average of 172,000 Texans, according to an analysis by electricity retailer Payless Power. California ranked second with 221 outages from 2019 to 2023, while Washington placed third with 118, according to Adi Sachdeva, data researcher at Payless Power. The report was based on data from the Department of Energy. More than a third of Texas’ outages in the past five years occurred during 2021, when a Valentine’s Day freeze led to widespread outages and the deaths of at least 210 people. According to the report, there were 47 outages in February 2021 and 91 all across Texas that year. The data reveals a paradox that’s become a common point of frustration: Texas is the national leader in energy production, yet the state’s aging power grid struggles to keep the lights on. Mass outages such as the one during the 2021 freeze — which the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the state’s grid operator, initiated to prevent electricity demand from overwhelming available supply — are rare. Typically, the outages Texans experience are localized and caused by damage to power lines, which in the Houston area are owned by CenterPoint Energy. TEXAS WILDFIRE: Xcel Energy acknowledges its equipment was likely involved in Smokehouse Creek fire The Texas power grid is among the worst in the country when it comes to grid malfunctions, according to Bob Marshall, CEO of Whisker Labs, a company that develops sensors to prevent home electrical fires that also collect data to measure faults on local grids. Malfunctions measured by Whisker Labs sensors can be caused by utility poles or other grid equipment failing, wires touching wires, wires touching poles, wires pulling loose, wires breaking or vegetation touching wires, he said. “The CenterPoint grid is amongst the most challenged that we see,” Marshall said, compared to other utilities in not just Texas but across the country. “Houston has the most power outages that we measure in the country, by far.” Power outages — and catastrophes such as wildfires — are becoming greater risks for utilities as the nation’s power grid infrastructure, much of which was installed more than 50 years ago, buckles under surging electricity demand and more extreme weather events. That was confirmed in the Payless Power analysis: The number of outages nationally from 2019 to 2023 was 93% higher than the previous five years, Sachdeva said. The Public Utility Commission of Texas, the state’s utility regulator, is requiring Texas utilities to file resiliency plans this year for the first time. These plans would lay out each utilities’ strategies to reduce outages and otherwise harden their infrastructure against weather-related events. https://www.houstonchronicle.com/bu...texas-leads-nation-power-outages-18887152.php
In regards to Centerpoint being too cautious about having outside crews brought in early, they are now losing out on revenue because so many Out Of Service customers means that Centerpoint isn't delivering Electricity to them and thus missing out on Delivery Charges.
