Hard-to-reach power lines complicating the restoration of electricity in northeastern Harris County - Houston Public Media
Hard-to-reach power lines complicating the restoration of electricity in northeastern Harris County - Houston Public Media
Much of northeastern Harris County remains in the dark four days after Hurricane Beryl. Part of the problem restoring power stems from the difficulty crews have in reaching the power lines.
State Representative Charles Cunningham worked for CenterPoint for more than 35 years, first as a lineman and then in management. He now represents House District 127, which includes Humble, Atascocita, and Kingwood — the last of which he helped build.
"I know everybody wants the light switch to come on right away, but when you're talking about the number of trees (that) were downed, the lines were down," Cunningham said. "The lines were not along the street. They're in the back of the woods and stuff. And you've got, what, over 5,000 miles of lines down? It's going to take a little while."
RELATED: Houston power outages: 870,000 CenterPoint customers without power Friday, four days after Beryl
Cunningham, who lives in Humble, has been in the dark since the storm.
"I had a conversation with one of my former state reps, Dan Huberty. He called just as the storm was hitting," Cunningham said, "and I basically told him, this looks like it's going to be at least four days, and so we're into day four now. And now, I'm told that there's still going to be half a million people (without power) going into Monday. And it looks like I might be one of those in that half a million pile there."
Cunningham said there would be time to assess responsibility for the outages later, once CenterPoint and the relevant state agencies had done their work to get the electricity back on.
"We'll be ready to see what comes out after we all look back at all the actions that were taken by CenterPoint and how well they communicated with the community," he said. "There's a script to be followed, and we'll get back and see how well it was followed."
Related Knowledge Center: ENERGY BASICS: electricity
Electricity is a secondary energy source: it is generated through the conversion of primary energy sources such as natural gas, coal, solar, hydropower, and wind. Electricity’s versatility is not cost-free: a substantial amount of energy is lost in its generation and the cost of storage is high, compared with fuels such as coal, oil and natural gas. The economics of battery technology hold the key to expanded use of renewable sources to generate electricity.