I'm not defending that evil pedo in the least, nor his buffoon administration, but IIRC, it was rejected because the powers that be said CP made sufficient profit to pay for it themselves.

I think that is a fair reason.

Quote:

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Still Think Centerpoint is to Blame?

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Absolutely.

Biden sucking doesn't absolve Centerpoint of the complete failure they have been the last 10 days.

I think you're lost. Let me help you out.

https://texags.com/forums/16

Yes, Centerpoint owns the responsibility on Beryl. If you were to blame the outages due to the freezes on renewables youd get much more agreement.

Its a privately owned utility. They are supposed to be taking their profits to make their system more robust over the years so that customers stay online during storms so they dont need to pay for out of town linemen and patchwork repairs. Instead the are privatizing the profits and socializing the losses.

It's like Jeff Bezos asking for PPP loans.

Bro, just do a little math here.

Centerpoint makes around $5-6 billion in gross profits per year. They can afford a $37M CEO salary but can't afford $100M for the basic service they're supposed to provide??

OK, so you don't want to impact CEO salary or shareholder profits...

Well, Centerpoint has over 2 million customers. This critical outlay would be less than $50 per customer and could be spread over a year or two of bills, resulting in bills of ~$2 higher per month.

Centerpoint is to blame here. They identified an issue, asked for federal assistance, then did nothing when that was rejected.

CampSkunk said:

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So what should the regulated monopoly have done? Clear cut all the trees? Where would the money have come from? Not the shareholders. It would have been us.

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The regulated monopoly should have followed their own filed vegetation control plan, and not been one of the regulated monopolies that spend the least amount on that plan.

The regulated monopoly also should have:

• Pre-staged line crews so that once the hurricane passed they could quickly and efficiently assemble at their pre-determined staging areas
• Had competent people in charge of managing the post-hurricane plan, including really basic things like ensuring adequate communication devices were available (which Centerpoint has failed to do over a period of years); had Centerpoint foremen in charge of sectors/areas to immediately be able to assess damage and begin a prioritization list
• Been competent enough to have linemen do more than 2-4 work orders in a day
• Assigned a Centerpoint competent person with each out of town lineman crew so that once the physical work was completed on restoration of poles, wires, transformers, etc. power could immediately be restored instead of sending out of town crews out to do work, having them complete the work then return to the staging area, then having a Centerpoint crew go back to the work area and verify and re-energize lines
• Not had a CEO and VP who think they did some super duper awesome job in their response when a 'tarded labrador retreiver could have been better

You know, little things like that. I mean, it isn't like just a few months ago Centerpoint had a trial run of things when those storms blew through the NW side and took out a huge section of their grid and supply.

CampSkunk said:

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I don't. I think it took seven days to repair the pole one mile from my house because of the luck of the draw. There had a million tasks to be performed, and I happened to be toward the end of the line.

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I passed by Tomball stadium on the Grand Parkway Tuesday morning, Tuesday afternoon, and Wednesday evening. You know what I saw each time……… a stadium parking lot filled with repair vehicles. Vehicles 48 hrs after the hurricane still not working.

When KHOU interview crews there on Wednesday, they said they had not been issued any orders yet. And then CenterPoints VP tried to say it was because the crews needed safety briefings, yet the crews later said they never received any safety briefings.

CenterPoint was inept. They tried to lie to cover their ineptness and the lie was exposed. Hope Dan Patrick and crew neuters the *******s.

CampSkunk said:

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Serotonin said:

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Bro, just do a little math here.

Centerpoint makes around $5-6 billion in gross profits per year. They can afford a $37M CEO salary but can't afford $100M for the basic service they're supposed to provide??

OK, so you don't want to impact CEO salary or shareholder profits...

Well, Centerpoint has over 2 million customers. This critical outlay would be less than $50 per customer and could be spread over a year or two of bills, resulting in bills of ~$2 higher per month.

Centerpoint is to blame here. They identified an issue, asked for federal assistance, then did nothing when that was rejected.

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Not quite. In 2023 they made $867 million in 2023 and $1.008 billion in 2022. Sometimes shareholders also like to be paid a return, in the form of dividends, because capitalism. They also have a $44.5 billion capital plan through 2030 and I'm quite certain (but I have no inside knowledge) that this figure includes signnificant expenditures to harden the infrastructure. I do agree that their CEO is overpaid, just like most CEO's who are treated like celebrities just because they are CEO. I'm just suggesting that their performance is not as bad as most politicians and grifters are suggesting, and I'll await the results of the investigation before I conclude that they are crap. I also know that $100 MM designated for infrastructure would have gone to infrastructure and maybe some of us would not have lost power because of it.

https://investors.centerpointenergy.com/news-releases/news-release-details/centerpoint-energy-reports-strong-q4-and-full-year-2023-results

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Yes, the performance in their emergency response absolutely is as bad as suggested and proven with hard facts.

You must be a centerpoint manager of some sort, otherwise nobody with any competence would take your position.

This is a repost of what I put in another thread, that I just ttt.


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So I got a wild hair and started looking at 10-K reports.

2019 10-K: LINK (page 67)
2020 10-K: LINK (page
2023 10-K: LINK (page

So the following values are used for O&M, since that's the only thing I can find that deals with maintenance.

2017: $1,397 MM
2018: $1,444 MM (3.4% increase)
2019: $1,470 MM (1.8% increase)
2020: $1,523 MM (3.6% increase)
2021: $1,591 MM (4.5% increase)
2022: $1,647 MM (3.5% increase)
2023: $1,669 MM (1.3% increase)

My bigger concerns with Centerpoint: we are running older transmission lines. What were they designed to? What conditions? IIRC, Cypress ain't exactly the 'newest' spot, so those lines are probably built in the 80's (maybe the 90's). That's 40+ years old. What's the plan to replace/renew them? The O&M budget doesn't look to be getting 'more' money; I would argue that's mostly driven by labor costs.

So where's the money being spent on maintenance to prevent long term outages? I'm not naive thinking we can bury the lines; that's silly. Maybe last mile, but not the 375 kV lines. But when are we replacing the towers? When are we making the design change from Cat 2 (peak wind) designs to Cat 4 (peak) with Cat 2 (sustained) wind loads? Doesn't seem much, but that's a big change. Is CP going to go to a large pole design vs. erector set towers?

BTW, CNP was doing about $0.29 of quarterly dividends till C19. Then went to $0.15. Each year has been creeping back up to $0.20 (2024). In their Q1 2024 slide, they mention $1.7-$2.1B in "Electric System Hardening and Modernization". But that'll happen in 2025 to 2027. While that wouldn't show up in the O&M area, you should see a decrease if they do upgrade things (newer stuff is cheaper to operate).

In older presentations, they do not mention upgrades or hardening. They mention mid-stream stuff (which I think they sold off). They mention that they kept their delivery charges flat, despite inflation (kudos, I guess). But they also talk about reducing O&M by 1-2% per year. I've worked in an old plant (the 1st Nylon plant in the world). They tried to do 10% O&M reduction over 10 years. Let me tell you how that works out: it doesn't. Old stuff breaks. It's expensive to fix. So you patch it up and kick the can. Rinse, repeat.

Most of what I've seen of CNP (and this is coming from a boy who's lived here 40+ years): modus operandi (kick the can).

~egon