HOUSTON — Power outages soared during the derecho storm that hit the Houston area on May 16. And so many people were looking up power information on the CenterPoint outage tracker that it went down and still isn’t back up.
With the tracker map down, CenterPoint was offering up a page showing the total number of outages, though it didn’t indicate where in the coverage area they were.
We noticed a lot of people in the Houston area searching for the outage tracker map, so we reached out to CenterPoint to ask about progress in bringing it back.
Below is the statement they sent to us.
“Immediately following the May 16 storm, CenterPoint’s Outage Tracker experienced technical challenges, due to the amount of traffic hitting the site, which limited performance for our customers. With the tool not functioning as it should, we worked to provide a short-term solution during the multi-day event which included producing maps with estimated restoration times as well as providing service-area-level restoration updates.
We recognize the inconvenience caused by not having a functioning outage map and can assure our customers we’re working to bring a replacement live as quickly as possible. While we continue working toward a solution for the existing tool, we encourage customers to register for Power Alert Service® as well view general outage information – updated every 15 minutes – on our website.”
As of 11:30 a.m. on Wednesday, there were 4,140 CenterPoint customers without power.