The recipient of heavy criticism from Texas leaders following Hurricane Beryl’s pummeling of Houston, CenterPoint Energy is attempting to show its seriousness about correcting the power problems it had during the deadly storm.
Even as the company is under investigation by the Texas legislature and other state leaders, this week, the company that provides electric and natural gas utility services in Texas, Indiana, Ohio, Louisiana, Minnesota and Mississippi announced an agreement to work with a firm in order to better prepare its assets in extreme weather prone regions.
The agreement is with Technosylva, a global leader in wildfire science and extreme weather risk mitigation solutions, to utilize predictive analytics and artificial intelligence. The two companies have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) enabling CenterPoint to leverage Technosylva’s leading extreme weather risk predictive analytics and mitigation solutions throughout CenterPoint’s entire network and will focus on an all-weather hazards approach.
The collaboration is part of CenterPoint’s $21 billion commitment over the next five years to electric and natural gas resilience initiatives, including improved reliability and system modernization.
“Our defining goal is to build the most resilient coastal grid in the country that can better withstand the extreme weather that we continue to see impact our nation, and I believe that our work with Technosylva will help us achieve this ambition,” said Jason Wells, President and CEO of CenterPoint.
“Technosylva’s world class, predictive analytics and mitigation platform for extreme weather events and wildfires, combined with their market-leading software and AI and Machine Learning-based tools, will provide us with more timely and accurate insights into threats to our infrastructure. This is a key step toward achieving our goal of becoming a national leader in utility resilience and emergency preparedness and response.”
Technosylva’s risk monitoring platform integrates high-resolution modeling, predictive analytics, and real-time data to offer actionable insights into extreme weather events and threats to network assets. The company’s software performs hundreds of millions of extreme weather simulations daily to generate current and near-term risk forecasts available in real time, allowing its customers to predict and identify areas of concern and proactive steps to reduce outages.
“As utilities work to harden the power grid for increasingly common extreme weather events, it’s critical they have the most accurate and timely intelligence possible to plan, prepare and protect their networks to be able to keep the lights on for their customers,” said Bryan Spear, CEO of Technosylva. “We are thrilled to work with the CenterPoint Energy leadership team as they work to continue to deliver resilient, reliable, safe, and sustainable energy to their customers.”
While CenterPoint attempted to restore electrical power following Hurricane Beryl, it received help from OGE line crews.
Source: press release