For more information contact
Emily Mir Thompson
Phone 713.207.3085
Pager  713.619.5143

HOUSTON – October 5, 2006 – As of 10 am, CenterPoint Energy has restored power to  downtown buildings following an outage that was caused by a fire early this morning at its Gable Street substation. The fire resulted in the outage to about 400 residential and commercial customers in downtown Houston.

The fire occurred this morning at 3 a.m. at the substation, located on the north end of downtown Houston at the cross streets of McKee and Elysian. A substation serves as a junction point along the electrical network that connects power plants, high voltage transmission lines and lower distribution lines. Substations serve two main functions: to switch transmission circuits and to step down voltage to appropriate levels for distribution.

CenterPoint Energy’s substations have protective devices in place that detect faults and isolate equipment to prevent further damage to the system. All protective devices worked as designed.

At this time the cause of the fires is unknown but the company will conduct a thorough investigation.

CenterPoint Energy, Inc., headquartered in Houston, Texas, is a domestic energy delivery company that includes electric transmission & distribution, natural gas distribution and sales, and interstate pipeline and gathering operations. The company serves nearly five million metered customers primarily in Arkansas, Louisiana, Minnesota, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and Texas. Assets total approximately $16 billion.  With more than 9,000 employees, CenterPoint Energy and its predecessor companies have been in business for more than 130 years. For more information, visit the Web site at www.CenterPointEnergy.com.