02 Feb Real Solutions for Winter Storms
With colder weather approaching, many of us are reflecting on the events of almost a year ago when Winter Storm Uri debilitated our community. Many reasons were discussed as to the cause, with much finger-pointing at the State. Regardless of the cause, one thing is for sure. We need to do whatever we can to prevent this from happening again.
Right after Uri, I got together with City Staff and other officials in the area, and we started working with Centerpoint to develop plans to protect the community against future storms. These plans were confirmed Monday in a meeting with Centerpoint officials. They include:
– Expand Centerpoint’s customer base to address outages on a more equitable basis.
– Development of a program for the use of large mobile generators that will allow customers that have outages to get back online within a shorter period.
– And the development of an Emergency Load Management Program, which allows homes to sign up for rolling outages ahead of time and be compensated financially by Centerpoint.
The City has also strengthened our backup generator program for Public Buildings to ensure we can continue to provide community services in the event of power outages.
These programs will not be the total answer to this ongoing issue, but being proactive in providing real solutions allows for real progress.
Stay warm, and please let me know if you have any questions.
Craig