CenterPoint says grid upgrades will help Houston face hurricane season

After Hurricane Beryl left more than 2.2 million CenterPoint Energy customers without power, Houston is heading into another hurricane season with a simple test: has the grid really changed?

Harris County officials said the 2026 hurricane season began June 1 and runs through November 30, and the Harris County Office of Homeland Security & Emergency Management urged residents to prepare now. That warning carries extra weight in a region where outages quickly ripple into schools, hospitals, traffic signals and home safety.

CenterPoint says it has spent the last two years hardening the system in response to the anger that followed Beryl, which made landfall July 8, 2024 as a Category 1 hurricane. The utility said the storm damaged thousands of poles, lines and other electric equipment. It restored more than 1 million customers in the first 55 hours, reached more than 80% restored by July 13, more than 85% by July 14 and more than 98% of impacted customers by July 17.

The company is trying to show those numbers now come with a stronger grid behind them. On May 14, 2026, CenterPoint conducted a full-scale emergency response exercise simulating a Category 3 hurricane at its Emergency Operations Center, with coordination among local emergency agencies, first responders and customer communications teams. In its Systemwide Resiliency Plan, the utility says it is working toward 130,000 stronger storm-resilient poles, more than 2,200 transmission structures to be rebuilt or upgraded, and undergrounding for more than half of its system.

CenterPoint’s Greater Houston Resiliency Initiative tracker, updated May 28, 2026, reported 67,792 storm-resilient poles and equipment, 10,418 miles of tree trimming and clearing, 641 automation and intelligence devices and 585 miles of undergrounding across the 12-county service area. The tracker is customer-facing and neighborhood-specific, a sign the company knows trust depends not just on work being done, but on showing where it is happening.

That trust was shaken after the May 2024 derecho and Hurricane Beryl left more than two million utility customers without power for multiple days. The Public Utility Commission of Texas opened a formal investigation into storm preparedness and response in the Greater Houston area on July 15, 2024, after Governor Greg Abbott ordered the review. Regulators later approved findings aimed at identifying reforms to reduce future storm-caused outages.

CenterPoint said in 2025 that Houston-area outage minutes through June 30 were down about 45% compared with the same period in 2024. That is not a guarantee against the next hurricane, but it is the clearest year-over-year measure residents have as they decide how seriously to take this season. For families across Houston and Harris County, the question now is whether those upgrades hold up when the first real storm hits.