Remember when CenterPoint Energy said it was going to install 56,000 new storm-resilient transmission poles? Customers can now check an online dashboard to see where those upgrades occurred and what projects are in the works for their neighborhoods.
The utility company’s Community Progress Tracker launched Wednesday morning. Residents in CenterPoint’s 12-county area can type in their address or ZIP code and see the projects that are completed or currently underway near their homes.
Since August 2024, CenterPoint has installed thousands of new utility poles, conducted 8,000 miles of tree trimming, buried more than 430 miles of power lines to reduce exposure to storm damage, and provided 500 new automation and intelligence devices to monitor outages.
The purpose of the tracker is to keep customers informed of what the company has been doing to strengthen the electric grid around Greater Houston, said Tony Gardner, chief customer officer at CenterPoint.
The tracked projects are mostly big initiatives that have already been completed but there are some planned projects in the dashboard with an estimated date range of when they will be finished. The dashboard isn’t intended for customers to view when their power will be restored during a failure; CenterPoint’s outage tracker already covers those inquiries.
“The Community Progress Tracker won’t tell you in real time that there’s somebody out there working on a pole,” Gardner said. “It will provide you with the infrastructure work that we’re doing in that area and show you date ranges so you’ll know about when we’re going to conclude all the work in that vicinity.”
CenterPoint will continue to let people know when planned outages will occur in a particular area due to maintenance or repairs. “We try our best to make sure we communicate with our customers if we are going to experience a planned outage,” Gardner said. “We know that we’ve had some issues with that in the past but we’ve refined that process and are making sure that we’re in lockstep with Operations.”
A progress tracker was requested by some customers and elected officials to ensure transparency and accountability that the utility company is in fact doing what it said it would do, Gardner said.
“Our customers have asked us to let them know where we’re going next and what work we’re going to be doing in their neighborhoods and on their streets,” he said. “That’s what the tracker is meant to give customers, a sense of when and where we’re doing the work and how we’re making the investments as it relates to the Greater Houston Resiliency Initiative.”
Customers can access the tracker on their desktop devices or mobile phones, and CenterPoint produced a short video to walk users through the process.
If it looks like the tracker is only showing already-completed projects in a particular neighborhood with nothing on the horizon, Gardner says hit the refresh button because the data will be updated multiple times a month.
CenterPoint stepped up its game after widespread criticism occurred during Hurricane Beryl and a massive derecho windstorm in 2024. The vast majority of CenterPoint’s 2.9 million customers lost power during Beryl, even though there was significant lead time ahead of the Category 1 storm, prompting lawmakers and residents to question whether the utility company did enough to stage crews and prepare infrastructure.
Additionally, CenterPoint’s outage tracker crashed or was offline during the 2024 storms and people had to get information about outages and power restoration from social media, with some saying they determined where power had been restored by using the Whataburger app’s map of open vs. closed restaurants.
Gardner acknowledged that since 2024, customers have demanded transparency and accountability. The utility company recently reported that about 30,000 customers lost power during a pair of arctic blasts and said, due to extensive preparation, workers were able to restore power in less than an hour in most cases.
“We are making some additional investments,” Gardner said. “We’re going to continue to trim more vegetation, about 8,000 miles this year. We’re installing more storm resistant poles. The work isn’t done. That was just the beginning. We’ll continue to make the right investments to strengthen the grid in terms of resiliency and reliability. Our system can take a punch and get back up.”
“One thing we’re really proud of is that all these investments have helped us reduce customer outages by more than 100 million minutes compared to 2024,” he added. “It’s working, and hopefully customers are experiencing that for themselves.”
This article appears in Private: Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2026.