Ed Hirs - Energy Fellow, University of Houston Joins Houston's Morning News

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Yeah, it feels that way sometimes with the powers out,
especially if you don't have a generator. You want to
know why so many people have a generator in Houston,
It's because so many of us lose our power, even
on days when you don't expect to lose your power. Houston,
as I said, had the worst record in the entire
country for the month of August, which of course doesn't
make the point. Folks at Sendpoint happy that KPRC, too

(00:20):
ur television partner was doing a expose on that. Ed
Hers joins us ERJ. Fellow at the University of Houston.
Why do you think that we have these certain zip
codes here in the Houston area that just seem to
have problems no matter what's going on with the weather.

Speaker 2 (00:36):
Some of it's growth, some of it is just age,
some of it is just long standing problems. Annacdotally, I
can tell you that the transformer in the backyard blows
up every eighteen months, pretty routinely, sentrapnel everywhere that the
office building, we had twelve years of intermittent power, everything

(01:00):
firing off, and eventually, following Hurricane Beryl, they found out
that well, yeah, there was an insulator that had been
shortening for the last twelve years. You know, it's a
lack of diligence, a lack of care. That's what we're
suffering with. That's why it took them three weeks to
recover from Hurricane Beryl. We've got trees that have grown

(01:23):
into the rights of way. That's not only just a
problem for the power lines, but a water main I
see down the street here has now been broken for
a fourth time in a year and a half. The
city and the Center Point need to coordinate and clean
things up. Get the vegetation off the lines, upgrade the lines,

(01:45):
and look at the rest of the infrastructure. As you
pointed out earlier, they're Center Point blaming the victim. That's nonsense.
Centerpoint has a job to do. You know.

Speaker 1 (01:56):
It's funny. I think this is not the excuse at
a point in any way, shape or form. But I
think this is a problem that is going on across
the entire country right now when it relates to two
electric providers. I remember when I lived in Virginia where
we only had one electric provider. We didn't have any
choices about who we get our electricity from. Our neighborhood

(02:16):
used to have this kind of a problem. We'd go
out with no explanation. We were the only only homes
that are little cul de sac, the only homes in
the entire neighborhood of about five or six hundred homes
where the power went out. Turns out, you know, I
managed to find somebody who actually worked for the energy provider.
He said, yeah, you're on a different circuit. You're on
an old circuit. The rest of the neighborhood is on
the newer circuit. They could fix the problem, but we

(02:38):
cost about five thousand dollars and they don't want to
spend the money.

Speaker 2 (02:43):
Yeah, that's that's kind of a logical explanation. But you know,
we only have one provider here at Center Point. You know,
you can buy your electricity through any retail provider. That's
like that's a middleman. That's like buying roses from the
guys at the corner of Post Oak and West Teimwer.
It's the same set of roadses that come from the
airport every day, different different sellers. The Center Point is

(03:08):
the utility that delivers the electricity here. And you know,
they say they're getting better, and of course they've gone
to the Public Utility Commission they've got a rate increase.
There's a lot of catchup work that has to be done. Well.

Speaker 1 (03:23):
The question is do you think the ketchup work is happening?
Is it being done well?

Speaker 2 (03:28):
I think we're seeing getting done. I'm seeing new poles
being installed. I think they're talking about having installed thirty
thousand new poles. That's nice. That's a small, tiny percentage
of the number of hundreds of thousands of poles in
the service area. You know, each wire, each tree, every
every location needs to be checked. And they're upgrading, you know,

(03:52):
their their ability to see the overgrowth of vegetation and
to monitor the line th real time. They're installing equipment
that other utilities have used around the nation for more
than twenty years. The Centerpoint had refused to install.

Speaker 1 (04:10):
Well, let's hope they catch up, and I guess the
only way they're going to is if we keep the
pressure on.

Speaker 2 (04:15):
Well, we have to be diligent. I mean, the one
time I was able to kind of force something the
Center Point, they had a poll had interfered with a
flag over the water burger and after four or five, six, seven, eight, nine,
ten calls, nothing happened. But a photograph posted on x

(04:35):
then known as Twitter, worked really well.

Speaker 1 (04:38):
All right, well there you go. If you're having problems
with Centerpoint, yeah, make everybody aware of it. Ed hears,
thank you. Ed HER's Energy Fellow with the University of
Houston at six twenty seven