Keith Stephens - CenterPoint V.P. Joins Houston's Morning News

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Yeah, that's the one that we don't want to hear
it this morning, right, got no power? Everybody's got power
this morning. Not a problems. Nice Sunday day, not to worry.
Seven to fifty two our time here in Houston's morning News.
The question is what has happened at Center Point since
last hurricane season in the beginning of this hurricane season?
And I will say, Keith Stevens, who's a Center Point VP.
I've seen a lot of your trucks out there. I've

(00:22):
seen a lot of Centerpoint trucks removing tree limbs and
other things that it can interfere with the power branches.
Do you have any idea how many miles that you
folks have gone through since last hurricane season and to
trim things back?

Speaker 2 (00:34):
Hey Jimmy, first of all, thanks for having us on
and listen of you know, the directo last spring and
then a hurricane barrel last summer we're coming out of.
We listened to a lot of our customers, We were
in the community very frequently. We got a lot of feedback,
and what we committed to was building and operating the
most resilient coastal grid in the nation. And so I'm
happy to say, over the past ten months or so,

(00:55):
you know, we have replaced or insult I'm resilient post
twenty six thousand of them them across the Greater Houston area,
the twelve counties that we knew her. We've trimmed about
six thousand miles of vegetation to put that in p
Serve Texas is about seven hundred and seventy five miles wide,
and it's like the Jimmy biggest pointing across from Louisiana
all the way over to New Mexico. We've six different

(01:19):
times back and forth if you were to just stretch
it out into the straight lines. We've also put down
that about automated devices on our system that makes our
circuit smaller. So five thousand in a chunk of customers,
if you will, that might get impacted by an outage,
A fewer people undergrounded about four hundred miles of line.
So we've done an incredible amount of work and we've
also opened there. We're proud that we got it done

(01:40):
ahead of hurricane season, but there's more work to come
for that's not stopping. Our crewis are absolutely focused on
executing every single day.

Speaker 1 (01:46):
All right, Keith, I'll try to stick with you long
time Candred Year you're cutting out a little bit on
this here, but let me ask you about that. We
had a thunderstorm here within the last couple of weeks.
I think at one point there was eighty thousand plus
customers who were without power. Took a couple of days
to get every buddy back, and I think that made
people a little bit nervous that that was kind of
a run of the mill thunderstorm, and yet it took
it took a while to get everybody back online. You know,

(02:10):
were we in a position here where we can reasonably
expect to get everybody's power back within a couple of
days if we have a hurricane.

Speaker 2 (02:17):
Hey, Jaan, just to set the facts straight here, So
we did a storm come through over Memorial Day night.
We staged additional cruise ahead.

Speaker 1 (02:24):
Of ton have that.

Speaker 2 (02:24):
Actually it came in overnight and there were winds that were,
you know, sixty to seventy miles an hour in key air,
and it ended up knocking out about one hundred and
one hundred and sixty seven thousand customers. Is be back
in less than twenty hours. So what we were doing
is we're building that grid. We got everybody in punch
when a storm comes through and we can get folks
back one quicker. We do know that that can take

(02:45):
up outages due to the storms. You know, Houston has
a one hundred percent will always be rating when it
comes to climate vulnerability from the folks at You know,
we have everything that affects us from hurricanes, the storms too.
We had snow this past We've got to be ready
for everything. But we want to build that grid that
can take a punch and can give back up. Query

(03:05):
exactly what we're doing.

Speaker 1 (03:07):
So what is it? I'm sure you have a hurricane prepared.

Speaker 2 (03:10):
Display that's exactly absolutely.

Speaker 1 (03:12):
Yeah, And I'm guessing that you know, especially for this year,
what would be what would be the procedure? Take me
quickly if you would through the procedure here. Let's say
we've got a Cat too storm bearing down on the
Houston area and we you know we recently can expect
this category two when it hits. How far ahead of
time do you begin staging and how do you go
about that process of getting people on standby for way

(03:35):
after the storm is over?

Speaker 2 (03:37):
Sure? Well, first of all, we're constantly monitoring the weather.
You might know that we hired matt Lands, say City Weather.
We've installed one hundred weather stations around the Greater pu
scenario to be able to from us own situational awareness.
But we're constantly monitoring the tropics and the and the
goal to have our you know, seven days out, we
will be telling people that we're monitoring, we're monitoring it.

(03:57):
Five days we'll be putting out those calls from mutual
late ahead of the time. We've already got twin more
actively was a personnel available to us across the country
should we need to call on them. Five out, we'll
start pre staging them. Kind of day three out, we'll
be at our emergency Operations Center. We'll and from that
point forward we will be executing and so you can
expect to hear more from us day three daily updates

(04:18):
at five o'clock every day on, you know, kind of
three days eight three days out, doing our days out,
and then we will continue to communicate that throughout the
whole restoration process cover two hours. Our goal is to
get people back up as quickly as possible, and different
from last year, we will have our goal estimated time
restoration within twenty four hours of the storm leaving our
global area.

Speaker 1 (04:38):
All right, well, I'm sure we'll get tested, so Dona,
thank you, sir, appreciate it. That is the centerpoint. VP
Keith Stevens Side