grid resilience

CenterPoint reports progress on grid improvements ahead of 2025 hurricane season

CenterPoint Energy aims to complete its suite of grid resiliency projects before the 2025 hurricane season. Photo via centerpointenergy.com

As part of an ongoing process to make Houston better prepared for climate disasters, CenterPoint Energy announced its latest progress update on the second phase of the Greater Houston Resiliency Initiative (GHRI).

CenterPoint reported that it has completed 70 percent of its resiliency work and all GHRI-related actions are expected to be complete before the official start of the 2025 hurricane season.

"Our entire CenterPoint Houston Electric team is focused on completing this historic suite of grid resiliency actions before the start of hurricane season,” Darin Carroll, Senior Vice President of CenterPoint's Electric Business, said in a news release. “That is our goal, and we will achieve it. To date, we have made significant progress as part of this historic effort.”

CenterPoint’s resiliency solutions include clearing higher-risk vegetation across thousands of miles of power lines, adding thousands more automation devices capable of self-healing, installing thousands of storm-resistant poles, and undergrounding hundreds of miles of power lines.

CenterPoint's GHRI efforts, which entered a second phase in September 2024, aim to improve overall grid resiliency and reliability and are estimated to reduce outages for customers by more than 125 million minutes annually, according to the company. It has undergrounded nearly 350 miles of power lines, about 85 percent of the way toward its target of 400 miles, which will help improve resiliency and reduce the risk of outages. CenterPoint also aims to install the first of 100 new local weather monitoring stations by June 1.

In March, CenterPoint cleared 655 miles of high-risk vegetation near power lines, installed 1,215 automated reliability devices capable of self-healing, and added an additional 3,300 storm-resilient poles.

In April, CenterPoint will begin building a network of 100 new weather monitoring stations, which will provide 24/7 weather monitoring and storm response preparation.

“We will continue to work every day to complete these critical improvements as part of our company's goal of building the most resilient coastal grid in the country,” Carroll added in the release.

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A View From HETI

Houston's data center scene has received its latest bullish forecast. Photo via serverfarmllc.com

The Houston market could more than double its data center capacity by the end of 2028, a new report indicates.

The report, published by commercial real estate services provider CBRE, says greater demand for data center capacity in the Houston area is being fueled by energy companies, along with large-scale cloud services and AI-driven tenants.

In the second half of 2025, the Houston market had 154 megawatts of data center capacity, which was on par with capacity in the second half of 2024. Another 28.5 megawatts of capacity was under construction during that period.

“Multiple providers are advancing new builds and redevelopments, including significant power upgrades to recently purchased buildings, underscoring long-term confidence even as the market works through elevated vacancy and uneven absorption,” CBRE says of Houston’s data center presence.

One project alone promises to significantly boost the Houston market’s data center capacity. Data center developer Serverfarm plans to use part of a $3 billion credit facility to build a 250-acre, AI-ready data center campus near Houston with a potential capacity of more than 500 megawatts. The Houston campus and two other Serverfarm projects are already leased to unidentified tenants, according to CoStar.

A 60-megawatt, AI-ready Serverfarm data center is under construction in Houston. The $137 million, 438,000-square-foot project, located near the former headquarters of computer manufacturer Compaq, is supposed to be completed in the third quarter of 2027.

Data Center Map identifies 59 data centers in the Houston area managed by 36 operators, including DataBank, Data Foundry, Digital Realty, IBM, Logix Fiber Networks, Lumen and TRG Datacenters. That compares with more than 180 data centers in Dallas-Fort Worth, more than 50 in the San Antonio area and 40 in the Austin area.

Texas is home to more than 400 data centers, according to Data Center Map.

In November, Google said it’s investing $40 billion to build AI data centers in West Texas and the Texas Panhandle.

“This is a Texas-sized investment in the future of our great state,” Gov. Greg Abbott said when Google’s commitment was announced. “Texas is the epicenter of AI development, where companies can pair innovation with expanding energy. Google's $40 billion investment makes Texas Google's largest investment in any state in the country and supports energy efficiency and workforce development in our state.”

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