CenterPoint Energy's mobile generator lease, which is costing over $800 million and has largely gone unused, has become a contentious issue for the utility company in the wake of Hurricane Beryl. The company indicated at a recent Public Utility Commission meeting that canceling the lease prematurely is not an option unless the supplier, Life Cycle Power, fails to fulfill its contractual obligations, which would then allow termination based on non-performance. CenterPoint executive vice president Jason Ryan explained that the contract had a prudence determination clause but emphasized that "Once the prudence determination proceeding was over, and nobody appealed that decision, it's my understanding that this provision is no longer a live provision of the contract that would allow us terminate under a determination by the Commission that these were not prudent," Houston Public Media reports.
Commissioner Lori Cobos expressed her skepticism and frustration during the meeting, questioning the performance capabilities of the generators, and scrutinizing CenterPoint's promotion of the mobile generators to lawmakers and the PUC as suitable for hurricane usage—a point that now appears contentious since, she pointed out, "talking about how these mobile generation units could be used for hurricanes. And the fact of the matter is, the majority of them...cannot be used for hurricanes." according to Houston Public Media.
The ongoing scrutiny of this major financial commitment by the utility company extends beyond the Public Utility Commission's ongoing investigation; it was also subject to extensive dissection by the Houston Chronicle, which raised questions about the contract’s terms and the selection process, revealing that more experienced, lower-cost options were snubbed in favor of a less established vendor, whose major investor had a contentious and litigious history.
The deal is now under intense scrutiny with Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick urging the PUC to "claw back" the money spent from CenterPoint to protect ratepayers from incurring the costs associated with the generators—these calls for financial reclamation echo a broader narrative of distrust and scrutiny not just from officials, but from consumer advocacy groups as well, who have suggested that CenterPoint refunds Houstonians for the generator's costs so far, as the operational usage of these generators has been practically non-existent since their acquisition. Subsequently, a legislative committee was expected to recommend new laws to address the situation by December and CenterPoint CEO Jason Wells apologized for not communicating “more clearly to our elected officials about the cost and the limitations” of the generators. He also offered for CenterPoint to forgo $110 million in anticipated profits “to re-earn the trust of our customers,” as stated in the Houston Chronicle.
Continuing their efforts to manage public perception, CenterPoint plans to host community open houses, the first of which will be held this Saturday in Houston according to statements provided by Jason Ryan to the PUC, where the company's response to Hurricane Beryl will be discussed and feedback will be gathered; Ryan mentioned that between this weekend and the end of September, "There will be at least 16 such meetings across the Greater Houston area between this weekend and the end of September, "to get customer feedback, to demonstrate our new outage tracker, to help people sign up for power alert service if they're not already and get a lot of other information at the same time that we're getting their feedback," per Houston Public Media.
