More than a quarter million Houstonians are without power for a second day after Hurricane Beryl stormed through the metropolis last week. The Cat 1 storm caused at least $2.5 billion in damage, knocking down 10 main transmission lines and an untold number of utility poles. One would expect that power could be restored within hours. What most people do not know is that Texas is an energy island, unconnected to the rest of the nation's power grid making it vulnerable to prolonged outages. What's more the population of Harris County is aging and subject to numerous. chronic medical disabilities. Seven percent have no cars making escape from the heat difficult. Many have no air conditioning, which makes living in Houston's steamy subtropic climate bearable. No electricity also means no food due to lack of refrigeration and no way to cook.
Politicians are looking for answers to the prolonged outage. CenterPoint, a regional utility, is coming under increasing scrutiny, One federal lawmaker has asked for a Department of Energy investigation of the utility. It has blamed the storm's surprising strength and longevity for the damage. Experts think that a Category One hurricane is not powerful enough to do the extent of damage to the city's distribution system. The Houston Chronicle's editorial board criticized the company's tree maintenance program, which is next to last in spending amoung the city's four power companies. It also singled out its outage tracker program had be offline since May's thunderstorms. Lack of information provided to its customers is also a sore point. They remember the company's performance in 2008 when power was out for two weeks affecting 2 million people.
What is becoming increasly clear is that innovative solutions to Texas' power isolation are needed as the climate warms rapidly and storm intensity increases. Burying transmission lines in selected areas is one solution, but it is very expensive. In California PG&E estimated the cost for burying it's transmission lines at $2.5 million per mile. Southeast Texas is wet and the Earth is a good conductor of electricity. The fact is that Houston was built with fossil fuels; building sprawl into floodplains is rampant. Reversing that trend will be costly and take time*. So far policy makers are clueless about how to unwrap the Gordian knot they have created.
*One estimate is that the city would have to condemn 10,000 buildings in existing floodplains at a cost of $27 billion.