Michelle Hundly From Centerpoint Energy Joins Houston Morning News, July 10th, 2024

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
I good morning. Thank you forhaving me this morning and for sharing this
information with our customers. We appreciateit very much. And so many of
these may be aware that after sucha red show, we had many people
trying to look at the outage maps, including third party vendors and those that
try to grab information from the map. So it caused an issue that we

(00:24):
have to take down the map.We weren't able to serve all. Okay,
we don't have a lot of time, so can we could just cut
to the chase. We were toldthat the servers aren't working. You haven't
replaced the servers, so that's beena delay. How much of this is
what's happening in the city of Houstonis because of the bureaucratic red tape that
you have to go through every timeyou try to make it change. Where

(00:45):
are you standing right now in termsof what is your map, what is
your plan, what neighborhoods are yougoing to specifically do you have that mapped
out? And what kind of hopecan we give people that they're going to
get straight answers, not just publicrelations. So again, the outage map

(01:06):
we have to take down because ofthe folks that too many people. So
we are working on a replacement andwe will have that soon. In the
meantime, last night we provided alink for a restoration map, and so
that will, you know, hearingthe frustrations of our customers. We now
have this restoration map available and theycan look up their area and look at

(01:29):
where they are in the restoration process. In the meantime, we're working on
another outage map that we can bringto our customers with the information that they
would like to receive going forward.Last time, we heard yesterday that you
were expecting to get a million peopleback by the end of the day today.
Is that's still the case. Yes, absolutely, we are at one

(01:49):
point three at the moment, andso in twenty four hours we have restored
over six hundred and eighteen thousand customers. Okay, and again, the plan,
as I understand it, is yougo to the most need and the
most bang for the buck. First, you're going to bring back hospitals and
police and fire and those types ofthings, and then you start to worry

(02:10):
about neighborhoods. Is that correct?So we do emergency response, yes,
first, and then what we dois we work from think about like an
electric plug. So we start asthe power source, which is the sub
station, and we work our wayout along the line and restore as many
people as we can on the circuit, and then from the circuit we work

(02:32):
our way down to individuals. Soat we are, our process is to
restore as many people as we canat the beginning and then work down to
the individual level moving forward. Wouldit make more sense to have some centerpoint
representatives, people with real power locatedat some of these offices of emergency management?

(02:53):
The county judge down in Galveston saidhe couldn't get any response from Centerpoint
and basically he was the front linedefender as this storm was rolling through and
he had no answers. So wedo have personnel in these offices that allow
our personnel to be in the officeas well as requests personnel. We have

(03:15):
relationships with each of those OEM officesand so my understandings, we do have
someone in the Dickinson area and sowe certainly work with all of our stakeholders
as needed. Well, you mightwant to respond more quickly next time to
your stakeholders. Thank you for yourtime though today we appreciate it. Michelle
Hunley with Centerpoint. You all havea great day. I hope you get

(03:38):
your power back. We'll talk toyou tomorrow morning, bright and early five
am. Accidents and alternates coming upfrom the Generator Supercenter, dot Com Traffic Center,