"If conditions worsen, ERCOT may issue a directive to curtail power delivered to customers, which requires transmission and distribution utilities like CenterPoint Energy to implement controlled outages due to power generation shortfall. Controlled outages are planned emergency measures designed to avoid potentially longer and more widespread power outages for customers," the release said. "There are three levels of Energy Emergency Alerts (EEA), and controlled outages are only implemented as a last resort to maintain reliability of the electric system, and they are done with the intent to rotate outages in the electric service territory based on system conditions."