CenterPoint Energy conducts full-scale emergency exercise in preparation for 2026 hurricane season
Emergency exercise, building on CenterPoint's year-round emergency preparedness activities and drills, simulated a response to a major hurricane to strengthen future preparedness, coordination with local emergency agencies and first responders, as well as public and customer communications
HOUSTON, May 14, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, as part of an ongoing effort to strengthen its overall emergency preparedness and response efforts, CenterPoint Energy conducted its annual full-scale emergency response exercise in preparation for the upcoming hurricane season. The emergency exercise, held at CenterPoint's Emergency Operations Center, simulated a Category 3 hurricane impacting the Greater Houston area and included more than 400 members of CenterPoint teams – from Electric and Gas Operations, Emergency Planning & Response, Customer, Communications and others – executing the company's emergency response plan. About 100 state and local officials, emergency management officials, first responder partners and emergency experts observed the drill.
"For CenterPoint, preparing for natural disasters before they happen and simulating the effectiveness of our response and plans is vital to continuously improving and strengthening our response when future storms and hurricanes strike. Today's emergency exercise builds on the series of preparedness actions we've already taken throughout the year, as well as the continued infrastructure investments made as part of our Greater Houston Resiliency Initiative to strengthen the electric grid. The combination of actions we've taken are to help us better achieve the high level of performance expected of us, so we can restore power safely and more quickly for the millions of customers and families who depend on us," said Jesus Soto Jr., Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, CenterPoint Energy.
2026 Preparedness: Focus of annual full-scale exercise
The 2026 emergency exercise focused on executing a series of critical emergency response activities, including reviewing weather forecasts and impacts, analyzing damage prediction models to deploy resources, coordinating with emergency responders to support unified response operations, and communicating accurate and timely information to customers, as well as local and state leaders, on the scale of restoration efforts and progress.
The exercise simulated a Category 3 hurricane and included third-party expert evaluators that observed and provided feedback. CenterPoint will use the feedback to further improve, enhance and strengthen CenterPoint's emergency response preparedness, reflecting its year-round commitment to implementing the latest best practices and lessons learned following all emergency events, including hurricanes and other extreme storms.
More than 100 officials observed the exercise, including elected leaders, representatives from regional emergency management offices, Houston-area utilities, as well as key stakeholders from local education, healthcare and business communities.
2026 Preparedness: Scope of emergency actions to date
CenterPoint has taken a series of actions throughout 2026 to prepare for the upcoming hurricane season. Actions include:
- Opened a new Emergency Operations Center to support CenterPoint's year-round situational awareness and emergency response readiness and closely coordinate with emergency response partners, local and state officials, media and other key stakeholders.
- Completed more than 25,000 hours of FEMA trainings across more than 800 employees.
- Increased the number of frontline workers CenterPoint can call upon to support emergency responses by up to 20 times its normal workforce.
- Improved the damage assessment process with faster damage identification and power restoration.
- Enhanced real-time weather monitoring with 150 new advanced weather stations.
Greater Houston Resiliency Initiative (GHRI): Strengthening the grid
Since launching GHRI in 2024, CenterPoint has made a series of critical infrastructure investments to strengthen the grid to better withstand more extreme weather and improve day-to-day reliability for its customers. These ongoing actions, as part of GHRI, have included:
- Installing 65,000+ stronger, more storm-resilient poles;
- Clearing 10,000+ miles of higher-risk vegetation near power lines;
- Undergrounding 500+ miles of power lines; and
- Installing 600+ automation devices capable of self-healing.
Throughout 2026, CenterPoint will continue to make additional investments to further strengthen system resiliency and emergency preparedness. These combined resiliency actions will prevent CenterPoint customers from experiencing 150 million fewer outage minutes by the end of 2026.
To learn more about CenterPoint's preparedness actions and critical resiliency improvements across Greater Houston, visit: www.CenterPointEnergy.com/TakingAction.
About CenterPoint Energy, Inc.
As the only investor owned electric and gas utility based in Texas, CenterPoint Energy, Inc. (NYSE:CNP) is an energy delivery company with electric transmission and distribution, power generation and natural gas distribution operations that serve more than 7 million metered customers in Indiana, Minnesota, Ohio and Texas. As of March 31, 2026, the company owned approximately $47.8 billion in assets. With approximately 8,800 employees, CenterPoint Energy and its predecessor companies have been in business for more than 150 years. For more information, visit CenterPointEnergy.com.
For more information, contact:
Communications
Media.Relations@CenterPointEnergy.com
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SOURCE CenterPoint Energy