Residents in the Harmony Subdivision in Spring are fed up with CenterPoint Energy and what they call daily power outages and surges.
Jermey Butler has lived in the area for about four years. He told KPRC the problem seems to be getting worse and worse and is forcing some homeowners to spend hundreds, sometimes thousands on repairs to items damaged by the interruptions in service.
“Several neighbors have had to replace their A/C units at least once; we’ve had a lot of electronics that have had to be replaced,” Butler said.
Butler said CenterPoint Energy has also refused to reimburse residents for the items that have been damaged.
Butler told KPRC the neighborhood and area has had six surges and two major outages since Sunday.
“Some of the ways we’ve tried to mitigate and prevent our losses, right here. We’ve had electricians came out and install these surge protectors,”
Erich Lampman lives nearby, he said residents have filed complaints with the Public Utilities Commission and CenterPoint Energy but feel like nothing is being done.
“It’s getting to be anger, frustration, despair it’s depression,” Lampman said.
KPRC reached out to CenterPoint Energy about the problem and obtained the statement below:
Over the past several weeks, CenterPoint Energy has been working in Spring-area communities to address service interruptions. The majority of these interruptions have been caused by vegetation-related issues, such as tree branches coming into contact with our power lines.
We have been executing a safe and robust vegetation management plan, with approximately 40 miles of a total 47 miles of tree trimming completed on the circuits in this area since June. We anticipate completing tree trimming on the remaining approximately seven miles by the end of this month, which we expect to provide significant resolution to the service interruptions.
In addition to this work, we have performed system inspections, resulting in additional required repairs. The completion of these repairs has been impacted by the extreme heat and increased usage on our system. Yesterday, our crews responded to outages in the Spring area resulting from equipment issues. Our crews were able to quickly identify the needed repairs and worked to minimize the customers impacted to safely restore service. The nature of the repairs required specialized crews to replace multiple underground cables and equipment.
While we make every effort to keep the lights on and communicate on any planned outages, unexpected outages may occur as we complete the remainder of this work. In these instances, we will use our re-routing technology whenever possible to minimize both the number of affected customers and the duration of the outage.
We understand that losing power for any period of time can be difficult, especially during the summer. We apologize to our customers in the Spring area for the service interruptions and the impact they have had. We appreciate our customers’ patience as we continue the necessary work to mitigate further service issues in these neighborhoods.