Following the historic Winter Storm Enzo and an overnight hard freeze, CenterPoint Energy shared Wednesday that approximately 99 percent of its Greater Houston area customers had maintained normal electric service throughout the duration of the extreme winter weather event.
As part of its storm response, CenterPoint crews responded safely and quickly to scattered outages that occurred across its 12-county service area, restoring power to those small number of impacted customers. Last night, the company released the 1,200 mutual aid workers it had brought in to prepare for Winter Storm Enzo.
Given the status of both the electric and natural gas systems across its Texas service areas, CenterPoint has returned to normal operations and deactivated its Emergency Operations Center as of noon Wednesday.
"With Winter Storm Enzo now behind us, we want to again thank all our customers for staying off the roads and allowing our dedicated crews to respond safely and effectively when scattered outages occurred. We're also grateful to those crew members who worked in extreme conditions to provide our customers the service they expect and deserve. We would also like to thank the 1,200 mutual assistance personnel that traveled from other states to help us prepare. The actions we took to get ready for this winter storm season helped mitigate the impacts of Enzo on our customers, and our entire CenterPoint team remains committed to further strengthening the resiliency of our system," said Darin Carroll, SVP of CenterPoint's Electric Business.
Key actions: CenterPoint response to Winter Storm Enzo
As part of its planning and response to Winter Storm Enzo, CenterPoint took the following actions to prepare for possible storm-related outages, including:
- Marshaled approximately 3,000 frontline electric workers: CenterPoint workers and local contractors were positioned at three staging areas across the Greater Houston area and responded quickly and safely to impacts of the winter storm. On Tuesday, CenterPoint released 1,200 mutual aid workers to their home states.
- Provided temporary generation to warming centers: Deployed four small temporary generation units to provide power to local warming centers amid sub-freezing temperatures.
- Kept customers informed: Shared safety and preparedness information and resources with CenterPoint customers through direct outreach, press briefings, social media and other platforms.
- Conducted outreach to critical care customers: Reached out to identified Critical Care Residential and Chronic Condition Residential electric customers by email, phone and/or text.