Justin Sullivan/Getty Images News
CenterPoint Energy (NYSE:CNP) -5.3% in early trading Monday after Texas Gov. Abbott said he will seek an investigation by the state’s Public Utility Commission into the company’s response to Hurricane Beryl and preparations for future storms.
The governor said Sunday he will give CenterPoint (CNP) until the end of this month to specify actions it will take to reduce or eliminate power outages in the event of another storm.
Following Abbott’s news conference, CenterPoint (CNP) said it expects to have restored power to 90% of its customers by Monday; the company has restored power to ~1.9M customers since the storm hit on July 8, but the slow pace of recovery has raised scrutiny over whether it was sufficiently prepared for the hurricane.
As of Monday morning, more than 293K customers were without power across Texas, and more than 260K of those are CenterPoint (CNP) customers, according to PowerOutage.us.
A post on CenterPoint’s (CNP) website said more than 2,100 utility poles were damaged during the storm and 18,600 trees had to be removed from power lines, which affected more than 75% of the utility’s distribution circuits.