Pictured is the CenterPoint Energy logo on a building in Houston.
CenterPoint Energy is preparing for this weekend’s freezing temperatures in the Houston area by bringing in an additional 600 workers, winterizing its equipment and activating its emergency operations center.
“What that means is we pull all the resources that are dedicated to emergency roles,” Nathan Brownell, CenterPoint’s vice president of resilience and capital delivery, said Thursday during an appearance on Hello Houston. “So these are highly trained individuals in emergency management.”
The utility company will have 3,300 workers total prepared to respond to potential weather-related outages this weekend, when precipitation and freezing temperatures are forecasted by the National Weather Service. CenterPoint said it’s inspecting and testing its equipment, trimming trees and deploying compressed natural gas trucks throughout the region to serve as a backup to the natural gas system.
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It’s also installing heaters to prevent ice damage to the transformers at its substations.
“Inside of those transformers are actually heaters,” Brownell said. “So if ice does build up on them, the heaters really thaw it out.”
A heater used inside a CenterPoint transformer, without the cover on it. (Photo Credit: Photo courtesy of CenterPoint)
A heater with a cover on it that is used inside a CenterPoint transformer. (Photo Credit: Photo courtesy of CenterPoint)
A CenterPoint transformer. (Photo Credit: Photo courtesy of CenterPoint)
John Cornelius Jr., CenterPoint’s vice president of distribution operations, said the company expects some outages, though it anticipates that they will be minimal.
“We have not only crews, but also equipment and contractors that are being prepared to safely and quickly restore power, should any of our customers experience an outage,” he said.
The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), which oversees the state’s power grid, said it anticipates enough energy supply to meet demand this weekend. As of Thursday afternoon, ERCOT’s six-day energy forecast showed a sufficient power supply for the weekend, with energy demand peaking on Monday.
University of Houston Energy Fellow Ed Hirs said the state required natural gas suppliers and power plants to weatherize after a winter storm swept through Texas in 2021, leaving millions without power and causing more than 240 deaths.
“That’s going to be very helpful,” he said. “But still, we don’t have enough natural gas, coal and nuclear power plants to cover all of the demand.”
Hirs said power plant operators are incentivized to produce less energy in order to drive up prices and make more of a profit.
“That’s the game that ERCOT has,” he said. “It rewards scarcity, and if a market rewards scarcity, one has a tendency to get more scarcity.”