Who’s minding the store?

Posted on July 30, 2024 by bvanrysdam

The circus (Texas legislature) made its way back into Austin yesterday to hold a hearing on CenterPoint’s ineptness in its efforts to restore power following Hurricane Beryl.

While many of the senators showed anger and indignation during the day long testimony (State Senator Paul Bettencourt was awarded most outraged committee member of the hearing), it raised the question of where the buck stops.

Public Utility Commission Chairman Thomas Gleeson admitted that the PUC has not held utility companies accountable and that “I think we need a comprehensive look at how we fund utilities and how they prepare for storms” (you think said everyone?). It is shame that once again, we are being reactive rather than proactive.

The Public Utility Commission of Texas is in charge of regulating the state’s electric, telecommunication, and water and sewer utilities, implements respective legislation and provides customer assistance in resolving consumer complaints. The chairman and commissioners were all appointed by Texas Governor Greg Abbott.

Bettencourt said CenterPoint had “defrauded” rate payers who are now facing growing utility bills after state regulators allowed CenterPoint to recoup the cost plus a 6.5% profit for massive generators that sat on the sidelines during the storm.

Does anyone else see the irony here? State regulators set up the rules to allow CenterPoint to “defraud” its customers. If they (CenterPoint) are playing by the rules, shouldn’t we look at who makes the rules in the first place (Et Tu Brutus?)?

Bettencourt also accused CenterPoint of electing to spend money on the generators rather than clearing trees and vegetation that knocked out power lines, because CenterPoint can make a profit on the generators, but isn’t that the point of being a publicly traded company? The stock value as of today (7.30.2024) is down 5.53% over the past month. You don’t think there is another group people upset about that?

Capitalism promotes free market conditions, whereas socialism incorporates certain elements of centralized economic planning. Does the senator suggest we need to become socialists when it comes to powering Texas?

So how does this end? My guess is the buck will stop in somebody’s wallet courtesy of the consumer.

Here we go again

Posted on July 23, 2024 by bvanrysdam

“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results” – Albert Einstein

The city of Houston took it on the proverbial chin once again when Hurricane Beryl struck the Texas gulf coast. Although only a Category 1 storm, Beryl’s impact left more than 2.2 million customers without electricity and damaged countless homes and automobiles. The death toll continues to grow with at least 23 people having died due to various storm related causes as of this post.

The finger pointing began even before recovery efforts started with CenterPoint being the main target of people’s anger. Politicians have been holding press conferences and updates demanding answers on why the energy giant was not ready to deal with what was supposed to be a minor storm.

“Power companies along the Gulf Coast must be prepared to deal with hurricanes, to state the obvious,” said Texas Governor Greg Abbott.

Now to be fair, building an electrical grid that can withstand hurricane force winds is not easy. Houston’s geography makes putting lines underground problematic and very expensive (guess who would pick the check on that, it ain’t the power company ). Heavy vegetation (aka The Livable Forest) in many communities also make restoring power a nightmare for power companies. People love living among the tall trees until they fall on a power line, or worse a roof.

It is also a big task to coordinate line men and women to come from other states to help repair the grid. Each grid is different and requires workers are trained so they can safely make the necessary repairs. Plus you have to provide housing, food and other resources all to a moving target. Remember weather forecasters predicted the storm was first supposed to hit Brownsville, then they said Corpus Christi and then maybe Matagorda Bay. Again, it’s not easy.

But, to also be fair, one of the key components of a crisis is effective communication and that’s where CenterPoint clearly fell flat. Non-working outage maps, lack of emails/texts to customers and inconsistent messaging with the media threw fuel on a fire that was already raging. And why on earth would media tell its audience to go to the CenterPoint Outage map knowing it did not work.

It also did not help their messaging when the CEO was interviewed next to a thermostat showing the room at a comfortable 70 degrees. Where were the public relations people? They should have had him on-site where repairs were taking place. That photo would have helped demonstrate his commitment to working toward restoring power.

Still the politicians continue their media circus, grandstanding and acting surprised, very much like Captain Louis Renault in Casablanca who is shocked that gambling is taking place at Rick’s Café while collecting his winnings. One has to wonder how much the politicians collect from their winnings, I mean campaign contributions from CenterPoint.

Money Ball

Posted on July 15, 2024 by bvanrysdam

I am old enough to remember a time when one read the sports page, one found stories about sports. In today’s world, that seems to be an antiquated thing.

Take a look at the sports headline from the July 11^th edition of the Houston Chronicle:

Conference to look at all revenue sources

That’s right, the Big 12 Media Day was not focused on the student athletes (more on that later), but rather the all-mighty dollar. The conference is reportedly interested in selling naming rights to the league and possible private equity investment opportunities.

“As we build our brand, we will continue to build our business,” Yormark was quoted as saying in the story. “We will not stumble into this new era following settlement. In fact, we will be aggressive and very proactive.”

Looming on the NCAA future is an antitrust settlement that will reportable payout more than $2.7 billion in back damages and a revenue-sharing model that will pay players for the first time. It was never fair in the first place that the NCAA and its universities collected millions upon millions of dollars with the student athletes not able to collect a dime from their likeness and image while forced to wait before being allowed to transfer watching their head coaches play musical chairs landing jobs on a moment’s notice.”

So I understand why all of this is important, but still; it took 11 paragraphs before we actually got to any actual sports analysis (Utah has been picked as the preseason favorite in football by the way). Now to be fair to the Houston Chronicle, they did other stories from the Big 12 Media Day, but it was this story that had the BIG headline.

Maybe moving forward we can portal transfer these stories to the business section and leave the actual games on the sports page (now you kids get off my yard).