Hurricane Beryl

[Ross]

7 hours ago, Renaissance1999 said:

Its crazy to hear the mayor saying the city is "broke" when you have the port of Houston bringing in $900+ billion a year. How is that money not flowing into the city to better the infrastructure...These politicians are only good for finger pointing when things go wrong. They have the money to bury powerlines or better the grid but who knows where all that money goes to.

The City of Houston does not have the money to bury power lines, which is a mediocre idea in any case. The City gets money through property taxes and sales taxes and some other minor sources. Growth in property taxes is constrained by the revenue cap that was voted in 20 years ago and by state law. Sales taxes are at the statutory maximum. Without a change in the laws, Houston can not increase revenues to any great extent.

Power lines are owned by Centerpoint, a remnant of the incumbent electric provider Reliant Energy that was created by the power deregulation legislation. Power distribution is a natural monopoly, which the legislation recognized, which is why we have a regulated utility that performs the task. Centerpoint is not going to spend huge amounts of money on improvements without the PUC allowing those costs to go into the rate base.

[samagon]

1 hour ago, Ross said:

The City of Houston does not have the money to bury power lines, which is a mediocre idea in any case. The City gets money through property taxes and sales taxes and some other minor sources. Growth in property taxes is constrained by the revenue cap that was voted in 20 years ago and by state law. Sales taxes are at the statutory maximum. Without a change in the laws, Houston can not increase revenues to any great extent.

I agree changing the taxes is impossible, however, there are other levers to increase revenue, even with a static tax rate.

property values, aka, density.

a parking lot, or single family home on 5000sf, or garden apartments have a property value, parking garages, densely packed townhomes, 5 story apartments with GFR have a property value that is higher than the aforementioned options. 

as a simple example, 3% of a single family $400,000 home is $12,000. 3% of 2 $300,000 townhomes on the same plot of land is  $18,000. $6000 more revenue for the city right there. convert an entire neighborhood of 300 homes? 1.8 million just like that.

so yeah, the city has options, it can create policy that naturally increases density. make it easier to install GFR on apartment buildings, more dense transit options, reduce/remove parking requirements, give tax incentives to developers willing to build density. did I mention more dense transit? stop walking back LRT, BRT and bus service, expand that as fast and as hard as you can.

at the end of the day, you're right, in Houston, people are resistant to density, they are resistant to dense transit, so there is no way to increase revenues to any great extent. all they want is bigger freeways so they can move farther and farther away from the city, but still be "in the city". the problem is that aside from any sales tax for stuff they buy while in the city, there's no revenue from them, and they still need access to police, fire, EMS, and use the streets while in town.

Edited July 17 by samagon

[editor]

1 hour ago, Ross said:

The City of Houston does not have the money to bury power lines, which is a mediocre idea in any case.

I didn't hear anyone saying that the City of Houston would foot the bill for burying the power lines.  That's just the same red herring we've heard for generations, and like a generations-old herring, it doesn't pass the smell test.

I'm OK with the city paying for the underground power lines, if that also means the city takes ownership.  If CenterPoint wants to keep ownership, then it can bury the lines.  There's no shortage of federal disaster mitigation money waiting to help any combination of the city or CenterPoint to bury its infrastructure, like it should have in the first place, but was too lazy and greedy to do so.   

"Mediocre idea" requires an explanation.  Why is it mediocre?  Compared to… what?  Doing nothing, killing more people, and rebuilding again?  

Also, we all know why CenterPoint owns the lines.  We all know what a natural monopoly is.  We don't need someone to man-splain it to us.  Bringing it up has nothing to do with this discussion or fixing the problem, it just makes everyone think, "No shit, Sherlock."  

Remarkably, in other cities incumbent power delivery companies have no problems burying power lines.  Why is CenterPoint so broken that it can't take this very basic step?  Perhaps because it knows it can just keep passing the cost of repairs on to its customers over and over and over again, and nobody in Austin is going to do anything about it.

CenterPoint is truly backward.  Other power companies bury their power lines to protect their infrastructure investment.  CenterPoint fights it.  Other power companies encourage home solar because it lowers the cost of building and maintaining power line infrastructure.  CenterPoint fights it.  

CenterPoint's monopoly on power delivery should not be perpetual.  It should have to have its franchise reviewed every 10 years to see if its meeting its obligations.  Currently, there is no method of holding CenterPoint accountable for anything.  It could turn off all the power to the entire city for five minutes just for shits and giggles, and there is nothing that anyone can do about it.  That is not in the public interest.

I was having lunch in the tunnels yesterday, and sat near a couple of people who I presume were from CenterPoint.  I assume they were from CenterPoint because they were complaining about how much they pay each year to contractors to trim trees from around power lines.  Well, if you can't do the job, maybe you shouldn't be in business.  

[hbg.50]

Would it surprise you to know that 60% of Centerpoint’s customer’s power lines are already buried?

As it turns out, 60% of CenterPoint customers in the greater Houston area are already served by buried distribution lines, a company spokesperson told the Houston Business Journal.

[s3mh]

During Ike, I lived in an apartment complex along Allen Parkway.  We were without power for two weeks.  The lucky ones had power restored in 3-4 days.  Most were out of power for a week.  After Ike, everyone was talking about building a dike, burying power lines, flood improvements, etc.  Nothing was done to harden the power transmission system.  Perry or Abbott could have directed the PUC to make CenterPoint harden the transmission lines at any point over the 16 years since that storm hit.  So to now be all sanctimonious about CenterPoint is a bit too little too late.  

After Hurricane Sandy, the east coast utilities got $1.2 billion to storm harden their power substations.  They moved or elevated all the substations so that they would not be affected by flooding.  In Florida, the utilities have invested heavily in transitioning power lines from wooden poles to cement or steel structures which are rated for high wind speeds.  This caused the restoration times to go from an average of 18 days for Hurricane Wilma to six days for Hurricane Irma and 3.8 for Hurricane Ian.  

The state government has assumed that direct hit storms on the Houston area would be once in a generation events.  Hurricane Alicia was in 1983 and the next direct hit was not until Ike in 2008.  So, Houstonians could take one for the team with a once in a lifetime storm.  But then there was Harvey in 2017, the winter storm in 2021 and now Beryl in 2024 (in addition to the May derecho).  Houstonians were actually very patient with power restoration after Ike, but are now at a breaking point because it just keeps happening over and over. 

Throwing up your hands at the idea of burying all the power lines is a red herring.  No one expects CenterPoint to go around and bury every powerline in the city.  But where the power lines are critical on main throughfares and commercial areas with hospitals, grocery stores, etc., it is a good investment to bury the power lines.  It is expensive, but it works.  Downtown Houston has never lost power in any of these storms because all the power lines are buried.   Then, invest in transitioning the main powerlines into neighborhoods into steel/concrete polls that are above the trees and do not break in high winds.  

But the most cost efficient way of storm hardening residential homes is to get as much roof top solar and home battery storage deployed as possible.  I have a neighbor with roof top solar.  After the storm, he was running cords to neighboring homes to let people plug in refrigerators and small AC window units.  For the cost of burying the power lines to a residential street, you could install enough roof top solar to let people ride out the outage without any interruption.  

 

[samagon]

1 hour ago, hbg.50 said:

Would it surprise you to know that 60% of Centerpoint’s customer’s power lines are already buried?

As it turns out, 60% of CenterPoint customers in the greater Houston area are already served by buried distribution lines, a company spokesperson told the Houston Business Journal.

I bet this statistic is specific to the lines getting the power from the poles to the house.

my current home has wires hanging from the pole that come to my house. my parents home has wires buried from the pole to the house.

I make extra sure that there's no limbs that might fall on the line going from the pole to my house. my parents don't have to worry about that.

in both cases, there are still power lines and poles running in easements above ground to get power down the line for distribution to homes. CPE doesn't seem to care so much about trimming the trees near power lines. when we lost power in the May storm it was from a tree falling on a line getting power to my street, 30 people affected, 7 days waiting for a repair. when we lost power for this Hurricane, a tree fell onto a pole mounted transformer, 300ish homes affected, 5 days waiting for repair.

I mean sure, it'd be great if they did bury lines, but I think it would also help if they spent enough on maintaining their ROW.

of course if they don't spend the money on maintaining their ROW, they can pay that money out to investors, or give themselves bonuses for increasing margins. then when there is a natural disaster, they can apply and get disaster relief to fix the issues and not hurt the bottom line. that's just a thought that sits in the back of my mind, certainly no one running this business could be so dastardly, right? and I'm sure the government has protections in place to make sure companies aren't burning the system in a way such as this.

[hindesky]

I recently drove the Kirby Dr. portion of River Oaks and there are very few power lines down it. I could probably count them on one hand.

[hbg.50]

2 minutes ago, hindesky said:

I recently drove the Kirby Dr. portion of River Oaks and there are very few power lines down it. I could probably count them on one hand.

Most newer subdivisions bury their lines as well…Shadow Creek Ranch, Sienna, etc.

[HoustonMidtown]

 

How effective are buried power lines in preventing widespread power outages in cases like Beryl?

https://abc13.com/post/how-effective-are-buried-power-lines-preventing-widespread-outage/15065990/

[editor]

On 7/17/2024 at 10:08 AM, hbg.50 said:

Would it surprise you to know that 60% of Centerpoint’s customer’s power lines are already buried?

As it turns out, 60% of CenterPoint customers in the greater Houston area are already served by buried distribution lines, a company spokesperson told the Houston Business Journal.

Yes, it would.

But considering that, according to today's Chronicle, CenterPoint wants to tack extra money onto our bills for ordinary regular maintenance by sneakily labeling it a "resiliency plan," my guess is that CenterPoint is playing semantic games with the words.

"Are already served" means what exactly?  That the lines from the power station to their homes are all underground?  I doubt it.  That a small portion of the route, perhaps where it passes through a rich neighborhood, is underground?  Maybe.  

Like most of CenterPoint's statements recently, they're meaningless flak double-speak, and disconnected from the truth.

On 7/15/2024 at 6:42 PM, Zorin said:

As for where Jason P Wells, CEO of Centerpoint Energy lives....I know where, but will not divulge this in public.  

Since I asked for his neighborhood, and not his address, you'll forgive me if I choose not to believe you.

All I want to know is if his neighborhood lost power.  Why would something like that be a secret?

Also noted in the newspaper today is that at least one CenterPoint executive was in Taiwan with the governor during the storm.  

And the fact that CenterPoint's PR department is not answering questions from the media tells me, as a former journalist, that there's a lot that the company is hiding.

It's also worth noting that there's a lot of anger around town directed at "CenterPoint."  Let's not lose sight of the fact that CenterPoint is a company.  Companies don't make decisions, good or bad.  People do.  There are actual human beings who are responsible for making what should have been a low-end hurricane a major catastrophe.  

[Ross]

6 hours ago, editor said:

Yes, it would.

But considering that, according to today's Chronicle, CenterPoint wants to tack extra money onto our bills for ordinary regular maintenance by sneakily labeling it a "resiliency plan," my guess is that CenterPoint is playing semantic games with the words.

"Are already served" means what exactly?  That the lines from the power station to their homes are all underground?  I doubt it.  That a small portion of the route, perhaps where it passes through a rich neighborhood, is underground?  Maybe.  

Like most of CenterPoint's statements recently, they're meaningless flak double-speak, and disconnected from the truth.

Since I asked for his neighborhood, and not his address, you'll forgive me if I choose not to believe you.

All I want to know is if his neighborhood lost power.  Why would something like that be a secret?

Also noted in the newspaper today is that at least one CenterPoint executive was in Taiwan with the governor during the storm.  

And the fact that CenterPoint's PR department is not answering questions from the media tells me, as a former journalist, that there's a lot that the company is hiding.

It's also worth noting that there's a lot of anger around town directed at "CenterPoint."  Let's not lose sight of the fact that CenterPoint is a company.  Companies don't make decisions, good or bad.  People do.  There are actual human beings who are responsible for making what should have been a low-end hurricane a major catastrophe.  

The Centerpoint CEO lives in West U. The power lines to his house run down the back of the property from Morningside to Greenbriar and beyond. It's hard to tell if the power lines have trees in them, but the cable and phone lines that are at a lower level certainly do. I have no way of knowing whether he lost power. I can't tell if there's a generator for that house.

[editor]

There's been a lot of talk about how the electric infrastructure failed during the hurricane.  I'd like to hear people's experiences with internet service during and after the storm.

The reason I think of it is because I keep hearing ads on the radio for Comcast internet (Xfinity), claiming it is more reliable that wireless internet, and during the hurricane my experience was precisely the opposite.

Hurricane Beryl knocked out the Comcast/Xfinity internet service to my entire building for a week.  The building management said the outage didn't just affect us, but was across all of downtown.  I don't have a way to verify that.

All of my work-from-home neighbors who rely on Xfinity had to either go into the office, or burn PTO days.  

My personal internet is through a T-Mobile Home Internet box (actually, it looks like a little trashcan), and my job gives me a Verizon Home Internet box to use for work.  Neither of those went down, or saw any degradation of speed; although the T-Mobile box had its usual 4am daily reboot, which is an annoyance, but better than being without internet service like my Comcast/Xfinity neighbors. (My phones are on AT&T, and like T-Mobile and Verizon, had zero problems with that.)

My building's Comcast connection isn't old, so it should be the latest stuff.  We had DirecTV service building-wide until last year, when Comcast dug up the sidewalk on Fannin Street and hooked us into their underground network.  So it should be as reliable as Comcast can make it.  But apparently that isn't very reliable.  At least downtown.

What were your experiences elsewhere in Houston?  I'm particularly curious about Phonoscope, which I used to have when I lived in Midtown, and the local fiber company that used to provide service to my building, but I can't remember its name. 

[hbg.50]

AT&T U-verse fiber was fine when the power was restored.  I never lost my Verizon wireless access.

[HoustonMidtown]

I never lost XFinity internet or cable during Beryl at my EaDo house.

My business (near Willowbrook) has Comcast and Logix links - Logix was down for a week, Comcast never went down

We deployed Verizon hotspots to my critical employees - access was spotty at best the first couple of days

One of my developers has AT&T fiber near the Woodlands - he was down for 3 days after he got his power back.  

Edited July 23 by HoustonMidtown

[mkultra25]

No real issues with Xfinity internet or TV after the power came back on. There was one period of several hours where the connection would randomly drop for a few minutes and then come back up. The Xfinity cable drop from the utility pole to my house is hanging quite a bit lower than it should, but I haven't gotten around to having them send out a tech yet as it isn't affecting service. Xfinity has generally been reliable, and on the odd occasion when there's an outage, I use my phone as a personal hotspot to provide internet access to my computers (I work from home, and my cell service is with AT&T - I figure that if Xfinity and AT&T are both down at the same time, we've probably got bigger problems than lack of internet access).

After Ike I was without Xfinity service for almost a month, thanks to the cable between several utility poles being taken down by a tree branch. I called Xfinity every day until a crew finally showed up to make the necessary repairs. Had to depend on public wifi access points at branch libraries and places like Discovery Green until service was restored. 

[Ross]

Our AT&T fiber came back up when we had power restored. Before that, when we ran a few things on a portable generator, the Verizon Wireless internet worked just fine.

[editor]

4 hours ago, HoustonMidtown said:

I never lost XFinity internet or cable during Beryl at my EaDo house.

My business (near Willowbrook) has Comcast and Logix links - Logix was down for a week, Comcast never went down

We deployed Verizon hotspots to my critical employees - access was spotty at best the first couple of days

One of my developers has AT&T fiber near the Woodlands - he was down for 3 days after he got his power back.  

Thanks.  "Logix" was the name of the company I couldn't remember.  

Slightly more expensive than what I have now, but I really liked their service.  Shame they were kicked out of the building by the new management.

[august948]

21 minutes ago, editor said:

Thanks.  "Logix" was the name of the company I couldn't remember.  

Slightly more expensive than what I have now, but I really liked their service.  Shame they were kicked out of the building by the new management.

For unrelated reasons, we've decided to give starlink a try.  Anyone have experience with starlink during the storm?

[HoustonMidtown]

2 hours ago, august948 said:

For unrelated reasons, we've decided to give starlink a try.  Anyone have experience with starlink during the storm?

One of my business partners has StarLink at his home and lake house - it was down for 1 day post-Beryl, but no issues after that.

His Tesla couldn't contact the mother-ship during the outage either - he couldn't watch NetFlix !!

Edited July 24 by HoustonMidtown

[samagon]

I got a note from ATT fiber that they corrected an outage to my home. it was out for a day. power was out for 5 days though, so I'd have not noticed.

meanwhile, I have comcast at the coffee shop and not only was it out for an extended period, it is also out at least once a month for some random reason or another.

comcast sucks, if there are other options I will explore those before comcast, they are literally my last option.

[august948]

1 hour ago, samagon said:

I got a note from ATT fiber that they corrected an outage to my home. it was out for a day. power was out for 5 days though, so I'd have not noticed.

meanwhile, I have comcast at the coffee shop and not only was it out for an extended period, it is also out at least once a month for some random reason or another.

comcast sucks, if there are other options I will explore those before comcast, they are literally my last option.

Only Comcast customers know what Comcastic truly means. 

[trymahjong]

At Neartown meeting last night; Abbie Kamin was requesting the reporting and exact locations( ID# on poles?) of any damaged or leaning utility poles- no matter who poles belongs to. Apparently a map of these damaged poles is being compiled by COH.

Also— there is no plan/ protocol in place for COH to find and repair damaged or fallen stop signs, yield signs, school crossing signs etc. Abbie asks to contact 311 with the location, then contact her office and relay the 311 work order number and her office can follow up.

it looks like her office has established a routine to use those 311 work order# to do email follow up on any 311 reports her constituents make send her office.

Edited July 24 by trymahjong

[s3mh]

16 hours ago, mkultra25 said:

No real issues with Xfinity internet or TV after the power came back on. There was one period of several hours where the connection would randomly drop for a few minutes and then come back up. The Xfinity cable drop from the utility pole to my house is hanging quite a bit lower than it should, but I haven't gotten around to having them send out a tech yet as it isn't affecting service. Xfinity has generally been reliable, and on the odd occasion when there's an outage, I use my phone as a personal hotspot to provide internet access to my computers (I work from home, and my cell service is with AT&T - I figure that if Xfinity and AT&T are both down at the same time, we've probably got bigger problems than lack of internet access).

After Ike I was without Xfinity service for almost a month, thanks to the cable between several utility poles being taken down by a tree branch. I called Xfinity every day until a crew finally showed up to make the necessary repairs. Had to depend on public wifi access points at branch libraries and places like Discovery Green until service was restored. 

We have Xfinity internet and cell.  Internet was out for a week after the May storm and for almost two weeks after Beryl.  The cell service limped along for about the same period.  At times, we could barely get the internet on our phones when at home in the Heights.  

[Ross]

9 hours ago, s3mh said:

We have Xfinity internet and cell.  Internet was out for a week after the May storm and for almost two weeks after Beryl.  The cell service limped along for about the same period.  At times, we could barely get the internet on our phones when at home in the Heights.  

We never had any issues with internet on phones in Timbergrove. I wonder if more cell sites were out in the Heights than in other areas.

[hbg.50]

1 hour ago, Ross said:

We never had any issues with internet on phones in Timbergrove. I wonder if more cell sites were out in the Heights than in other areas.

Likely had more to do with Xfinity than the Heights.  Verizon wireless was just fine.

[mkultra25]

11 hours ago, s3mh said:

We have Xfinity internet and cell.  Internet was out for a week after the May storm and for almost two weeks after Beryl.  The cell service limped along for about the same period.  At times, we could barely get the internet on our phones when at home in the Heights.  

 

2 hours ago, Ross said:

We never had any issues with internet on phones in Timbergrove. I wonder if more cell sites were out in the Heights than in other areas.

 

39 minutes ago, hbg.50 said:

Likely had more to do with Xfinity than the Heights.  Verizon wireless was just fine.

Yeah, this is highly carrier- and location-dependent. AT&T's wireless coverage has always been iffy in parts of the Greater Heights area, and I have to think they just don't have as many cell towers in the area as competing carriers do. I've lost count of the times in the past that I was eating at Lola (11th and Yale), and was unable to get anything but a pitifully weak connection from AT&T's LTE network. You'd think that it would be possible to get a strong signal at one of the busiest intersections in the Heights, but no. 

After both the derecho and Beryl, AT&T cell service was basically nonexistent at my house, which is definitely not the norm. I had to connect to my wife's work phone, which uses Verizon's network, to get anything approaching a usable signal. It remained like this for several days after the derecho, but was thankfully back to semi-normal a day or so after Beryl. I think when there's a large power outage, AT&T's cell network gets overloaded quickly in this area as everyone's unable to use their regular home internet service. Verizon and T-Mobile don't appear to have the same issues, at least not to the same extent that AT&T does. 

[Ross]

16 hours ago, hbg.50 said:

Likely had more to do with Xfinity than the Heights.  Verizon wireless was just fine.

We have Verizon for our phones, but AT&T for the fiber internet, plus Verizon home wireless internet as a backup. I won't switch to AT&T for cell.

[mollusk]

My AT&T cell service was so lousy in the Heights that it almost always used the wifi link, but AFAIK we're about as far from a tower as you can get there.  T-Mobile worked OKish (and costs 1/2 what AT&T did).  If my internet went down it was for less than the couple of days the power was out.

[samagon]

I never had any issues with T-mo in Houston, in fact, if I'm in a situation where I need to connect a laptop to the internet, I'm more likely to tether to my phone via hotspot than connect to any open wifi. not just for security, but 9/10 it's faster than the shared wifi.

T-mo, at least in a bigger city like Houston, is great. used to be, get out in the country and it's spotty at best, but with their recent mergers, that's been corrected for the most part too.

[Ross]

On 7/17/2024 at 9:06 AM, samagon said:

I agree changing the taxes is impossible, however, there are other levers to increase revenue, even with a static tax rate.

property values, aka, density.

a parking lot, or single family home on 5000sf, or garden apartments have a property value, parking garages, densely packed townhomes, 5 story apartments with GFR have a property value that is higher than the aforementioned options. 

as a simple example, 3% of a single family $400,000 home is $12,000. 3% of 2 $300,000 townhomes on the same plot of land is  $18,000. $6000 more revenue for the city right there. convert an entire neighborhood of 300 homes? 1.8 million just like that.

so yeah, the city has options, it can create policy that naturally increases density. make it easier to install GFR on apartment buildings, more dense transit options, reduce/remove parking requirements, give tax incentives to developers willing to build density. did I mention more dense transit? stop walking back LRT, BRT and bus service, expand that as fast and as hard as you can.

at the end of the day, you're right, in Houston, people are resistant to density, they are resistant to dense transit, so there is no way to increase revenues to any great extent. all they want is bigger freeways so they can move farther and farther away from the city, but still be "in the city". the problem is that aside from any sales tax for stuff they buy while in the city, there's no revenue from them, and they still need access to police, fire, EMS, and use the streets while in town.

The City Charter imposed property tax revenue cap limits tax revenue growth to the lower of:

• the prior year’s cap, plus population and inflation growth, or;
• the prior year’s revenues plus 4.5 percent.

So, even if the City population grew by 50%(as a ridiculous talking point), tax revenues could only go up by 4.5%.

Sales taxes are not really controllable, but the City does get taxes from all the commercial property that has been special purpose annexed. Those special purpose annexations avoid single family residential property like the plague. Those folks are left to the tender mercy of the Harris County Sheriff's Office for policing, along with some Constables, and special districts for fire and ambulance.