HOUSTON — CenterPoint Energy gave a major update on the power restoration Thursday morning.
An executive with the company said that half a million customers still won’t have power until sometime next week.
That news came during a Public Utilities Commission hearing in Austin.
“That leaves about 500,000 customers that we currently expect to have outages that go into next week,” he said.
This comes after CenterPoint Energy said it plans to restore power to 750,000 more customers by Sunday after Hurricane Beryl impacted millions in the Houston area.
On Wednesday, the company said it had restored power to more than one million customers. At its peak, 2.26 million were without power.
The company said that based on its continued progress, it expects to have an additional 400,000 customers restored by the end of the day Friday and another 350,000 customers by the end of the day Sunday.
CenterPoint said its crews are near completion on damage assessment, with more than 8,500 miles of its circuits walked and thousands of miles flown across the Greater Houston area.
“Our restoration progress so far reflects our continued commitment to deliver on our promises to our customers,” said Lynnae Wilson, Senior Vice President, CenterPoint Electric Business. “We are fully focused on achieving our next restoration goals while continuing to address the issues in the hardest-hit areas where there is major damage to our equipment and infrastructure.”
The company said "more specific" estimated restoration times would be available on Thursday.
On Tuesday night, the company released a restoration map that claims to show areas with restored power, but many frustrated customers reached out to KHOU 11 News saying the map wasn't accurate.
KHOU 11 Investigates reported Monday that unlike in some past hurricanes, CenterPoint did not stage mutual assistance workers in Houston before Beryl made landfall.
On Wednesday, KHOU 11 Investigative Reporter Jeremy Rogalski sat down with the company's vice president of operations to talk about the criticism of their performance.
While Darin Carroll declined to give the company a letter grade on how it has responded to the widespread power outages, he maintained they wouldn't have done anything differently and they're restoring power at a record pace.
Watch Jeremy Rogalski's interview with CenterPoint Director of Communications Alyssia Oshodi: