About 5,600 Katy electricity customers will get underground power lines after CenterPoint Energy presented plans to bury nearly 4 miles of cable through the city.
Aaron Coronis, CenterPoint service area manager, told the Katy City Council on Monday, Oct. 12, that the project will protect "more than 50 critical facilities," including Katy City Hall, Fire Station No. 1 and several assisted living centers. Mayor Dusty Thiele presided over the meeting. The project is part of CenterPoint's Greater Houston Resiliency Initiative, or GHRI, which the company launched in August 2024.
Construction is expected to start in roughly 30 days, around mid-November, and last about eight months, Coronis told Community Impact, which first reported the project.
What residents should expect
Crews will work Monday through Saturday, 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. Planned power interruptions could last several hours. CenterPoint said it will overestimate outage windows so residents are not caught off guard if crews run into problems.
Road closures will be limited to one section at a time, according to the city council agenda packet. Katy Police will be on-site to direct traffic and maintain emergency access. CenterPoint said each work area will be restored before crews move to the next.
The company plans to notify affected residents through letters, emails, door hangers, texts and Nextdoor posts before, during and after the work.
How it's paid for
The Public Utility Commission approved the project. No city funds will be used. A portion of the cost will be passed on to all CenterPoint ratepayers across the Greater Houston area, not just Katy residents. Community Impact reported that CenterPoint did not disclose the total project cost.
How much outages should drop
CenterPoint's presentation to the council projected a 50% reduction in the length of outages during major storms and a 25% drop in day-to-day customer outage minutes for the roughly 5,600 affected customers. The underground lines will also prevent vegetation from contacting power lines, a leading cause of storm-related failures.
A separate section of the CenterPoint presentation showed a potential future phase that would serve Memorial Hermann Katy Hospital. That phase is not part of the current confirmed project.
Across Greater Houston, CenterPoint reported in an Oct. 6 update that as of Sept. 30, GHRI crews have undergrounded more than 900 miles of power lines, installed over 83,500 storm-resilient poles and cleared more than 14,000 miles of high-risk vegetation since the initiative began.
CenterPoint said it will begin notifying residents in the construction area through door hangers, texts and Nextdoor posts before work starts in their section.
