HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) — Thousands of CenterPoint Energy customers in the Greater Houston area are still without power on day 10 post-Hurricane Beryl. Among them are residents with buried power lines, raising questions about the effectiveness of underground electrical systems in preventing outages.
In Humble, Kerry West was without power while houses across the street had electricity. His neighborhood has had buried power lines for decades and has never experienced an outage this long. Adding to his frustration, CenterPoint’s outage tracker incorrectly showed his house as having power. It was eventually restored hours after he spoke to.
“I was told years ago that burying the lines stops the movement and breakage. But I haven’t seen any goodness that comes out of it yet,” West said. “The power outage made it very hard on everybody. It was not just my family that I was worried about. It’s the elderly people that we have in the neighborhood.”
Tyson Bower in Sugar Land, whose lines are also underground, got his power back on Wednesday afternoon. He shared that CenterPoint crews prioritize above-ground outages first and couldn’t give an estimated restoration time for underground lines. This made him question whether having underground lines was beneficial or disadvantageous.
“I felt like if we had above-ground lines, everything may have been restored quicker. What I’ve heard is if it was truly an underground issue, it’s hard. It’s more difficult to assess. You have to dig up the line. You have to cut off the power to the entire neighborhood to get to it. That takes time, and it’s way more expensive,” Bower said.
Harish Krishnamoorthy, an electrical and computer engineering professor at the University of Houston, confirmed Bower’s concerns. He explained that while buried lines cost five to 10 times more than overhead lines, they are 10 times less likely to experience interruptions due to protection from physical damage. However, outages can still occur if the underground lines are connected to overhead lines.
“The cables may be buried underneath when it comes to an end community. But when you go a bit further, that’s where you’ll see a transformer. So many of the distribution systems are still overhead lines. We need to look at where the electricity comes from. If there’s a break in any of those lines, that’s when you see a vast majority of homes in a locality losing power,” Krishnamoorthy said.
CenterPoint responded to questions about buried lines with a statement: “Approximately 60% of our customers are already served via underground, and CenterPoint will continue to identify strategic opportunities to underground lines. However, because many neighborhoods in Houston are over 100 years old, the streets and yards are not designed to support underground distribution lines. We will continue to increase resiliency in the overhead distribution lines that serve these areas, such as replacing older wooden poles with newer poles made from composite materials and designed to withstand higher wind speeds.
Additionally, one measure in CenterPoint’s Resiliency Plan involves undergrounding certain additional electrical distribution lines in areas, like the lines over freeways or those that serve critical infrastructure, first responders, or life-saving care (…) More information about CenterPoint’s efforts to increase reliability and resiliency across our system can be found at CenterPointEnergy.com/EnergyForTheFuture.”
