Houston was forced to rely on a Whataburger app to track power outages after Beryl

Houston residents trying to track power outages after Hurricane Beryl discovered that the city’s largest electric company didn’t have a working outage map, so they had to resort to a workaround: a hamburger app.

As temperatures soared and more than two million people were left in the dark, CenterPoint Energy Inc. customers discovered that the company’s website didn’t offer a power restoration tracker. Then, a social media post suggested using the Whataburger app to see which of the fast-food chain’s restaurants were closed during business hours, likely due to a lack of electricity.

The need for a workaround highlights broader concerns about CenterPoint as extreme weather increasingly challenges the reliability of Texas’ power system. Two days after Beryl made landfall, nearly 1.4 million of the company’s customers remain without power while Houston is gripped by extreme heat. While Texas does not have utility surge requirements in the event of a hurricane, CenterPoint says its 10-year investment plan includes more than $26 billion to expand, upgrade and strengthen its infrastructure.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said in an interview with Bloomberg News that the outages were a “horrible problem for our fellow Texans” and that he would ask the state Public Utilities Commission to study why there have been repeated power outages in Houston.

“I want the PUC to provide me and the Texas Legislature with information so we can take action next year to ensure events like this don’t happen again,” Abbott said.

CenterPoint said Wednesday it expects to restore power to 1 million affected customers by the end of the day, leaving more than 1 million people without electricity. The company’s outage tracking system was knocked offline in May after a severe storm hit Houston, sending traffic to the site and causing technical issues. CenterPoint said Tuesday night that it now has a new map to help customers track power restoration after Beryl.

“CenterPoint recognizes the inconvenience to its customers and will continue to provide general outage information in the interim,” the utility said in a statement. The company also said it plans to “replace the outage map with a redesigned cloud platform” by the end of the month.

Bryan Norton, 56, who posted an article on X about using the Whataburger app to track outages, relies on generators to power his home northwest of Houston and cooks on a propane stove.

The app “at least lets you know you’re not isolated,” Norton said by phone. “It just gives you an idea of ​​the magnitude of the problem.”

— Tope Alake for Bloomberg with assistance from Naureen S. Malik, Mark Chediak and Julie Fine.