Residents in a Conroe neighborhood near Broken Bough Lane are voicing frustration after being left without power for nearly two days, well beyond the original restoration timeline provided by Entergy Texas.
The outage began after a slow-moving storm swept through the area Monday night, bringing down trees with strong winds and lightning.
Many residents say it’s just the latest in a series of frequent outages that have disrupted daily life.
“We actually lost power twice this week,” said Logan Jones, who lives near the Conroe Country Club. “The transformer behind me blew up. They fixed that in a few hours, but then we lost power again two nights ago—and it’s still not back.”
Residents were initially told the power would be restored within 12 hours. However, 48 hours later, many are still in the dark.
“They said it would be back on in 12 hours, but now we’re sitting at 48 hours,” said Wade Davis, another resident still without electricity.
Ongoing issues prompt homeowners to buy generators
Neighbors say power outages have become so routine that roughly half the homes in the area now rely on backup generators.
“In this neighborhood, it’s really bad,” said Jones. “If a light breeze comes through, we lose power.”
Most of the people in the neighborhood expect power outages, and keep backup power sources within reach.
“Probably 50% of the neighborhood has jumped into the idea of having a full-time generator in our backyard,” added Davis.
Entergy responds
An Entergy Texas Spokesperson says it has made infrastructure improvements, including installing new poles and crossarms built to higher resiliency standards. The utility company also stated it is deploying new technology designed to better detect and respond to storms. See Entergy’s full response, below.
“Storm preparations are performed 365 days/year – from facility inspections and vegetation management to training and industry collaboration. Entergy Texas continuously plans for and improves the processes for positioning personnel in the right place with the required materials ahead of severe weather and assessing damage and restoring power as safely and quickly as possible after an event. Our year-round preparations include regular inspections of the grid and our facilities, implementation of measures to better protect our power plants from extreme conditions, and targeted vegetation tree trimming.
Entergy Texas has installed new poles and crossarms to a higher resiliency standard and continue to look for ways to modernize our grid to better withstand extreme weather events and make our storm response more efficient. This includes deploying new technologies that can help us detect outages or reroute power. Additionally, our teams conduct an annual tropical storm exercise, where employees across various departments respond to a simulated hurricane, testing storm response strategies, communication protocols and logistical coordination. This drill has been executed in partnership with external stakeholders, such as emergency personnel and first responders, ahead of the 2025 hurricane season, ensuring our teams are prepared for whatever Mother Nature may bring.
While our teams continue to prepare around the clock for severe weather, work has begun on executing the projects contained within Phase I of Entergy Texas’s Future Ready Resiliency Plan to improve infrastructure across Southeast Texas. Projects already approved by the PUCT include distribution feeder hardening, lateral hardening, transmission rebuilds and lateral undergrounding. Over the next 50 years, improvements for the Entergy Texas Resiliency Plan are projected to reduce outage times by an estimated 1 billion minutes, significantly cutting the time families and businesses spend in the dark after severe weather events.”
Entergy says the Conroe area affected by this week’s storm is now a priority and crews will continue working until power is fully restored.
