txags92 said:
I think people are getting hung up on either we let Centerpoint continue making a billion dollars a year in profit while doing little to no line maintenance or we completely take it over as a government enterprise. There is a huge middle ground there where the government can demand better from a company they have granted a monopoly to without actually taking over the operation.
There is no reason that the PUC can't set a minimum standard for line maintenance that they demand for continuing to let Centerpoint have the monopoly. There is no reason they can't set standards for how much downtime is acceptable before they start penalizing them. There is no reason we would need to allow Centerpoint to raise rates to be able to afford more line maintenance when they are turning a billion dollars a year in profit on a government granted monopoly. They could spend $100 million a year more on line clearance without breaking a sweat.
There is middle ground to expect more from Centerpoint without asking them to beyond what other nearby utility companies are doing for rates that are similar or lower than Centerpoint.
We also need a way to hold them accountable for resolving service and maintenance issues and requests. Like be able to report unresolved issues and/or maintenance to some third party who can fine them for being nonresponsive.
When The Woodlands first got involved in my situation back in Jan 2023, Centerpoint first sent out a pretty low-level service rep to our monthly neighborhood meeting. I understand that Centerpoint is a major employer, and frankly, I don't want to go to a meeting where I might hear a bunch of excuses and have to get upset/angry with my neighbor. But that is exactly what happened. No solutions, just excuses.
After that waste of time, The Township BOD requested CP show up at one of their meetings. IIRC, they didn't show up the first time, and they had to send multiple requests. Then CP finally sent the same guy who came to the neighborhood meetings. Again, he basically shrugged his shoulders. When the BOD asked him about trimming trees, he said it was going to take something like 6 months. When the BOD pushed back and said that was unacceptable, he said he didn't have the "authority" to expedite our needs.
Then, in the fall of 2023, when the situation had gotten worse, they sent a different rep to the meeting where I presented. He was very apologetic and seemed like he wanted to help, but that's when we got the "we don't have the budget or staff for repairs and maintenance".
That guy did send a crew to my immediate neighborhood, and he followed up with me several times. I had his name and work email and phone number, but he was adamant that I not share it with anyone else. It's clear they don't want the unwashed masses contacting them with problems.
Whatever they did seemed to have a positive effect. The power had been going out constantly, and this outage is the first one we've had since last fall. Other than just a few flickers (when we used to have tons of flickers, in addition to the outages), our power has been very stable.
But, I imagine whatever they did in my little area, they probably need to do all over their entire service area. But, they aren't...they only serviced mine because I raised a stink.
At one point, before I spoke at the Township meeting, I filed a complaint with the TPUC. This was after I had reported a power pole that had a pretty large tree and a lot of vines growing around it. I reported it directly to a CP repair guy when they were here restoring power from one outage, and I reported it to the Township (who at first didn't quite know what to do with my request). It took CP two weeks and ANOTHER multi-hour outage to remove that growth from the pole.
I posted earlier in this thread that, all that happens when you file a complaint is TPUC forwards your complaint to Centerpoint. All I got in response was a list of excuses for the outages they were willing to acknowledge, but the response flat out denied/ignored that one multi-hour outage even occurred (I had a neighbor's generator data to back it up).
Think about it, there really isn't a good way to even report a tree or vegetation that needs to be trimmed. You can call CP to report an outage, but how do you report anything else?
I honestly don't believe they want to deal with residential customers. Our service contracts and accounts (for electric) are not with CP, they are with Reliant, or Gexa, or Think, or whatever other fly by night billing service is offering the lowest kwh price when our contracts are up.
CP has a really nice barrier between themselves and residential consumers, and I think they like it that way.
