CenterPoint Energy restores more than 1.4 million impacted customers

HOUSTON, TX -- CenterPoint Energy crews continued to work last night into the morning, and the company has now restored more than 1.4 million customers — ahead of its restoration expectations for today. In addition, today, CenterPoint will be providing estimated restoration dates for substantially all impacted customers who haven't already received one.

“We are encouraged by the tremendous progress we have made as we track ahead of our restoration expectations. We are not going to stop until every impacted customer is back online," said Lynnae Wilson, Senior Vice President, Electric Business. “Many of the outages we have resolved have related to trees and other vegetation damaging our electrical equipment in the sustained high winds we experienced during the storm. Since Monday, crews have replaced over 2,000 poles and addressed damage from more than 6,000 trees impacting lines and other electrical equipment."

Tree crews started working as soon as it was safe to go out after the hurricane passed. Since Monday afternoon, approximately 840 tree crews addressed damage from the thousands of trees to restore power. One tree can take multiple hours to complete depending on severity of the situation. Before our crews can begin to work on getting the tree off our facilities, they must ground for the lines in order to ensure the safety of our crews and the public.

Important Safety Reminders

• Stay alert – ask to see a company identification badge before allowing a utility worker in your home.
• You can always call CenterPoint and ask if an employee was authorized to visit your home.
• Always stay at least 35 feet away from downed power lines and damaged electric utility equipment.
• Treat all down and damaged equipment as energized and report it to the company.
• If using a portable generator, place in a well-ventilated area and never run it inside to avoid a dangerous build-up of carbon monoxide.
• Crews are working to safely restore electric service for you and your family; please be cautious around restoration crews and give them plenty of room to safely assess damage and make repairs.

CenterPoint's electric customers are encouraged to enroll in Power Alert Service® to receive outage details and community-specific restoration updates as they become available. For information and updates, follow @CenterPoint for updates during inclement weather events.?