CenterPoint Energy CEO Jason Wells speaks to a reporter about the effort to restore power in the aftermath of Hurricane Beryl on Thursday, July 11 at a CenterPoint Energy office in Houston.

CenterPoint's worst power circuits

The electric interconnection to CenterPoint at Calpine Deer Park Energy Center in Deer Park.

CenterPoint Energy has a grand plan for hardening its electric grid serving Houston. Last year, the for-profit corporation asked the Department of Energy for a $100 million grant to help pay for it.

DOE experts were, shall we say, unimpressed.

CenterPoint lost out in the competitive grant process created under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. While some critics blamed partisan politics for the rejection, anyone who experienced Hurricane Beryl will find the DOE’s criticisms eerily familiar to their own.

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“The application does not adequately lay out the project risks and how those will be managed,” one section of the DOE’s review of the grant application said.

“The application is vague on how the community engagement will evolve going forward,” the agency observed elsewhere.

“The application does not adequately describe how economic and industry benefits from grid hardening in these areas besides Houston being a major port city,” experts noted.

The critiques go on and on. My colleague Claire Hao recently reported that city........

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