(Reuters) – Texas Governor Greg Abbott mentioned on Sunday he would require CenterPoint Vitality (NYSE:) to take instant motion to enhance its hurricane preparation and response efforts to energy outages reported within the better Houston space on account of Hurricane Beryl.
Abbott mentioned he additionally requested the Public Utility Fee (PUC) of Texas to launch an investigation into the corporate over its failure to revive energy promptly after the hurricane.
“To assist Texans within the better Houston space and to keep away from a repeat of unacceptable energy outages, I’ll give CenterPoint till the top of the month to supply my workplace with particular actions to handle energy outages and scale back the likelihood that energy might be misplaced throughout a extreme climate occasion,” Abbott mentioned throughout a press convention in Houston.
Abbott mentioned he would problem an government order to impose actions on CenterPoint geared to maintain energy on if the corporate didn’t comply.
CenterPoint, the most important energy supplier in Texas, mentioned it was capable of restore energy to greater than 85%, or 1.9 million, of its impacted prospects by Sunday.
There are nonetheless about 267,797 CenterPoint prospects with out energy, based on knowledge from PowerOutage.us.
Beryl, the earliest Class 5 storm on report, made landfall close to the coastal city of Matagorda final Monday, knocking out energy to about 2.7 million properties and companies in Texas.
CenterPoint expects to revive energy to 90% of all impacted prospects on Monday and is dedicated to doing an intensive evaluate of its response to energy outages, it mentioned in a press release following Abbott’s press convention.
