Nearly 2 million customers remained without power as of mid-afternoon Tuesday, as utility companies scrambled to restore electricity with temperatures topping 90 degrees.
The region’s three largest electric utilities each estimated that nearly half or more of their customers would see power restored by the end of Wednesday, though some could still be waiting several days.
About 1.4 million CenterPoint customers didn’t have power as of 10:30 p.m. Tuesday, with about 880,000 customers who lost power from Hurricane Beryl back online.
CenterPoint officials said Tuesday afternoon that they still expect to restore power to 1 million of the roughly 2.26 million customers who saw outages by the end of Wednesday. The company did not provide a timeline for the remaining customers. CenterPoint has said residents in harder-hit areas could see “prolonged outages.”
The company hadn’t released a more-detailed timeline for restoring power as of 10:30 p.m. Tuesday, citing the ongoing work to assess damage to its electric systems. Hurricane Beryl “more heavily impacted” Houston’s electric infrastructure than originally anticipated, causing widespread flooding, infrastructure damage and at least seven deaths.
“We understand how difficult it is to be without electricity in July and we are committed to working around-the-clock until every last customer is restored,” said Lynnae Wilson, a senior vice president at CenterPoint, in the Tuesday afternoon press release.
Company officials said about 12,000 frontline workers from out of the area are laboring to restore power. They are prioritizing health and public safety facilities.
CenterPoint maintains the systems that deliver power to nearly all residents of Harris and Fort Bend counties, along with some other corners of Greater Houston. In total, about 2.8 million Houstonians rely on CenterPoint, according to the company.
Suburban counties still out
About 230,000 customers served by Entergy and Texas-New Mexico Power in Greater Houston’s suburban counties also were without power.
Entergy reported about 129,000 customers remained without power in Montgomery County as of 10:30 p.m. Tuesday. About 15,000 Entergy customers in Liberty County and 6,000 customers in Galveston County also were without power.
Entergy officials said they expected about half of their 219,000 customers without power as of Tuesday morning would see power restored by the end of Wednesday. However, customers in the Conroe, New Caney and Cleveland regions likely would remain without power until Sunday, Entergy officials said.
Texas-New Mexico Power reported about 35,000 customer outages in Galveston County and 33,000 customer outages in Brazoria County as of 10:30 p.m. Tuesday. The utility estimated that power would return for those customers by Wednesday evening.
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