CenterPoint intends to increase their rates to recoup the cost of recovering from Hurricane Beryl, passing the cost on to the customer.

That dog won’t hunt. pic.twitter.com/QpTrJK9BkF

— Carol Alvarado (@CarolforTexas) July 30, 2024

In a fiery hearing, state Sen. Paul Bettencourt suggested CenterPoint's selection of a high bid for unused generators be investigated for fraud. https://t.co/v0QapwEEun

— Houston Chronicle (@HoustonChron) July 30, 2024

Investigations by Houston news station KHOU found CenterPoint had] spent about just half to a quarter as much on tree trimming as other regional utilities.

Senators also connected the failure of the outage tracker to the misalignment of incentives. If CenterPoint had moved its outage tracker to the cloud, Middleton noted, it would have kept residents apprised of how long they would be without power, allowing them to make plans to keep themselves safe in the heat - but the company would have lost the ability to earn a profit on server infrastructure.
"They got their nine and a half percent return on something that wasn't working, and they essentially defrauded their ratepayers," Middleton said, noting people died in overheated houses waiting for the return of electricity that an accurate tracker would have told them was still days away.
https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/4798551-texas-power-crisis-potential-causes-senate-hearing/

This company is milking taxpayers for all they get.

CenterPoint Energy is a regulated Transmission & Distribution (T&D) Utility company and does not own generation facilities in Texas. I do not understand what this guy is talking about in regards to idle generation. Unregulated companies operate in the generation & retail businesses and the three entities complete the system.

centerpole84 said:

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CenterPoint Energy is a regulated Transmission & Distribution (T&D) Utility company and does not own generation facilities in Texas. I do not understand what this guy is talking about in regards to idle generation. Unregulated companies operate in the generation & retail businesses and the three entities complete the system.

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Name checks out

Suspect that absolutely nothing will happen to CenterPoint and all our bills will go up

centerpole84 said:

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CenterPoint Energy is a regulated Transmission & Distribution (T&D) Utility company and does not own generation facilities in Texas. I do not understand what this guy is talking about in regards to idle generation. Unregulated companies operate in the generation & retail businesses and the three entities complete the system.

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https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/investigations/article/generator-centerpoint-beryl-high-price-19569498.php

centerpole84 said:

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CenterPoint Energy is a regulated Transmission & Distribution (T&D) Utility company and does not own generation facilities in Texas. I do not understand what this guy is talking about in regards to idle generation. Unregulated companies operate in the generation & retail businesses and the three entities complete the system.

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A couple of years ago Centerpoint spent around $800MM on "mobile" generators that have never once been used during any outage, or even fired up as far as records show.

schmellba99 said:

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centerpole84 said:

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CenterPoint Energy is a regulated Transmission & Distribution (T&D) Utility company and does not own generation facilities in Texas. I do not understand what this guy is talking about in regards to idle generation. Unregulated companies operate in the generation & retail businesses and the three entities complete the system.

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A couple of years ago Centerpoint spent around $800MM on "mobile" generators that have never once been used during any outage, or even fired up as far as records show.

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The mobile generators they bought are more like mini-power distribution centers. They are supposed to generate enough electricity to feed back into the line when it's 110 in August, the available kWh is low, and we are facing rolling brownouts to conserve power. They aren't really meant for a hurricane situation when all the lines are down (extra kWh does no good in that situation).

But they are bulky to set up (also the cost to set up would have to be built in to the kWh they are selling to the customer), the uses are narrow, and there may or may not have been kickbacks involving when buying them.

jopatura said:

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schmellba99 said:

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centerpole84 said:

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CenterPoint Energy is a regulated Transmission & Distribution (T&D) Utility company and does not own generation facilities in Texas. I do not understand what this guy is talking about in regards to idle generation. Unregulated companies operate in the generation & retail businesses and the three entities complete the system.

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A couple of years ago Centerpoint spent around $800MM on "mobile" generators that have never once been used during any outage, or even fired up as far as records show.

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The mobile generators they bought are more like mini-power distribution centers. They are supposed to generate enough electricity to feed back into the line when it's 110 in August, the available kWh is low, and we are facing rolling brownouts to conserve power. They aren't really meant for a hurricane situation when all the lines are down (extra kWh does no good in that situation).

But they are bulky to set up (also the cost to set up would have to be built in to the kWh they are selling to the customer), the uses are narrow, and there may or may not have been kickbacks involving when buying them.

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They don't seem very useful or practical.

chase128 said:

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jopatura said:

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schmellba99 said:

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centerpole84 said:

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CenterPoint Energy is a regulated Transmission & Distribution (T&D) Utility company and does not own generation facilities in Texas. I do not understand what this guy is talking about in regards to idle generation. Unregulated companies operate in the generation & retail businesses and the three entities complete the system.

---

A couple of years ago Centerpoint spent around $800MM on "mobile" generators that have never once been used during any outage, or even fired up as far as records show.

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The mobile generators they bought are more like mini-power distribution centers. They are supposed to generate enough electricity to feed back into the line when it's 110 in August, the available kWh is low, and we are facing rolling brownouts to conserve power. They aren't really meant for a hurricane situation when all the lines are down (extra kWh does no good in that situation).

But they are bulky to set up (also the cost to set up would have to be built in to the kWh they are selling to the customer), the uses are narrow, and there may or may not have been kickbacks involving when buying them.

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They don't seem very useful or practical.

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They are extremely useful to whomever received the $800 million contract

It's easy to see how so many companies simply make it their strategy to compete for government contracts, especially if they are "woman and minority" owned. They make a killing with no oversight.

Ag13 said:

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chase128 said:

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jopatura said:

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schmellba99 said:

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centerpole84 said:

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CenterPoint Energy is a regulated Transmission & Distribution (T&D) Utility company and does not own generation facilities in Texas. I do not understand what this guy is talking about in regards to idle generation. Unregulated companies operate in the generation & retail businesses and the three entities complete the system.

---

A couple of years ago Centerpoint spent around $800MM on "mobile" generators that have never once been used during any outage, or even fired up as far as records show.

---

The mobile generators they bought are more like mini-power distribution centers. They are supposed to generate enough electricity to feed back into the line when it's 110 in August, the available kWh is low, and we are facing rolling brownouts to conserve power. They aren't really meant for a hurricane situation when all the lines are down (extra kWh does no good in that situation).

But they are bulky to set up (also the cost to set up would have to be built in to the kWh they are selling to the customer), the uses are narrow, and there may or may not have been kickbacks involving when buying them.

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They don't seem very useful or practical.

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They are extremely useful to whomever received the $800 million contract

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Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Silly me.

Seems to me that 2.8% dividend yield needs to be gone before they raise TDU charges.

If the investors don't like the loss of their yield they can replace the people that led to it!

That will never happen, and is part of the problem. A lot of these investor-owned utilities tend to cut corners with ROW and line maintenance. It looks good from a profitability standpoint, but when things go bad, it hurts the ratepayers.

Kenneth_2003 said:

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Seems to me that 2.8% dividend yield needs to be gone before they raise TDU charges.

If the investors don't like the loss of their yield they can replace the people that led to it!

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No chance this happens.

Ag13 said:

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Kenneth_2003 said:

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Seems to me that 2.8% dividend yield needs to be gone before they raise TDU charges.

If the investors don't like the loss of their yield they can replace the people that led to it!

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No chance this happens.

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Oh I know. It would take some level of government action to force it via legislation. Whole party of me said screw them, the state created them, the state can take away, I also recognize that path would be lined with portals and unintended consequences.

Why is government involved at all? Let the competition and the free market reign.

Texas needs more energy. More people are moving here all the time. More technology companies like Samsung and Tesla are using more and more energy all the time.

We need about 10 nuclear energy plants around the state. Now.

Irrelevant to the discussion here.

aTmAg said:

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Why is government involved at all? Let the competition and the free market reign.

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And this, boys and girls, is the correct answer to damn near everything.

Don't forget that Greg Abbott wasn't alone in his foreign trip during Beryl. One of the people with him was a top exec of CenterPoint who was representing them with foreign business interests. Abbott won't do anything to CenterPoint that CenterPoint won't agree to behind close doors.

Your Texas government is a wholly owned subsidiary of interests whose sole interest in you is how much money they can extract from your wallet with 0% interest in actually providing you necessary services. And for some reason we keep choosing that path

Do y'all remember this many massive grid failures and similar infrastructure disasters back when public utilities were actually…public utilities? No? Hmmmm….

Quote:

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"If I spend $1 on prevention, tree maintenance, cutting the trees down, I make two or three cents," Hirs said. "But if I spent $100 on disaster recovery, I'm going to make a significantly much greater profit. Therefore, we (utilities) kind of wait for disaster to strike."

After disaster strikes, utilities go through a regulatory process with the Public Utility Commission of Texas to try to recoup storm recovery costs (including a rate of return) by passing them along to customers' monthly bills.

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Interesting Read

Heineken-Ashi said:

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centerpole84 said:

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CenterPoint Energy is a regulated Transmission & Distribution (T&D) Utility company and does not own generation facilities in Texas. I do not understand what this guy is talking about in regards to idle generation. Unregulated companies operate in the generation & retail businesses and the three entities complete the system.

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Name checks out

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One has nothing to do with the other.

I have no allegiance to CenterPoint Energy but I do have a working understanding of the electric utility industry in Texas. I was not aware of the generator lease for grid stabilization and I would not even attempt to try and justify it without any more knowledge but I stand by my earlier statement about the T&D utility not being allowed to participate in the unregulated generation business since 2001 when the PUC "de-regulated" the industry. Questioning why they weren't installed & running ahead of the hurricane is a valid question but the answer will not suggest that any customers would have had their service restored any sooner had they been operating. I am not aware that there was any shortage of generation to the coastal bend region during that time period.

Why would the cost not be passed on to the consumer? Who else is supposed to pay for it?

HTownAg98 said:

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That will never happen, and is part of the problem. A lot of these investor-owned utilities tend to cut corners with ROW and line maintenance. It looks good from a profitability standpoint, but when things go bad, it hurts the ratepayers.

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Insider hint, this is where all utilities cut expenses first. It is detrimental to reliability, but they bet on the come.