Questions and dissatisfaction are brewing post-Ida over the integrity of Entergy’s New Orleans system and the forethought of its grid planners.

Greater New Orleans is on its second day of complete blackout following Hurricane Ida’s knockout blow. The city is currently islanded because of a “catastrophic transmission failure” that cut all eight transmission corridors into the city, according to Entergy (NYSE:ETR). (See Entergy Won’t Estimate Hurricane Ida Restoration Times.)

“Ida’s historic intensity has brought a tremendous amount of damage across Louisiana and Mississippi. Because of the extent of damage and rebuilding required, we expect recovery to be difficult and challenging, and customers in the hardest-hit areas should expect extended power outages lasting for weeks,” Entergy said in a Tuesday update. It also said thunderstorms today and tomorrow over south Louisiana could further hamper restoration efforts.

New Orleans City Council President Helena Moreno pledged investigations into Entergy once city leaders can shift their focus from restoration.

“For all eight to fail? … I’m just wondering whether this could have been prevented,” she said in an interview with local station WWL-TV.

Moreno said Entergy engineers told her that assessments of the transmission damage alone will take about four days.  

“What I find unfortunate is that so often it takes something like this for changes to be made,” she added.

Entergy admitted that Ida’s damage “eliminated much of the redundancy built into the transmission system.”

Entergy Louisiana CEO Phillip May said the transmission tower that collapsed Sunday night on the banks of the Mississippi River had recently passed inspection.

However, some on Twitter pointed out that the buckled tower was mottled with rust and raised questions about its structural integrity. Entergy did not return a request for comment about the age and condition of the 400-foot tower.

May said the tower was simply no match for the wind speeds despite its “robust” engineering design.

“Those towers, all of those towers, went through Hurricane Katrina without wavering. But this wind event experienced much higher wind fields, more devastating wind to those structures and to our system than even Katrina,” May told WWL-TV.

May said Entergy has been using rate increases prudently to harden the grid against intense storms.

“Every time we build a new line, it’s built to a higher standard. It’s using different engineered structures, things that would be able to withstand, you know, 150-mph winds, that kind of thing. More robust foundations and so forth so they can’t be pushed over by the wind,” he said.

Ida came ashore Sunday with maximum sustained winds of 150 mph, according to the National Hurricane Center.

Entergy said it’s narrowed options down to two for restoring power for essential services in the city: Either generate power inside the islanded city, or re-establish its links to the Eastern Interconnection. It said it could focus crews on getting at least one of the seven standing lines re-energized, or it could generate power within the city using the nearby Ninemile Point natural gas-fired plant and the new gas-fired New Orleans Power Station.

The latter is the plant that Entergy hired paid actors to promote at City Council hearings in 2018. At the time, Entergy touted the plant as useful in any future islanding scenarios.

Moreno said the plants’ contributions would provide more than 600 MW to the city, enough to power essential services, but not enough to restore power to homes.

Entergy New Orleans usually has a summer demand peak of more than 1 GW.

Entergy said either of the options could bring “first light” to New Orleans as early as Wednesday night. It said it preferred restoring at least one transmission link over keeping the city islanded with a limited standalone power supply.

“Under either scenario, New Orleans Power Station and Ninemile Power Station will be extremely valuable and important local sources of generation providing power to customers,” Entergy said in a press release. “Any power to the region will allow the company to begin powering critical infrastructure in the area such as hospitals, nursing homes and first responders in Orleans, Jefferson, St. Bernard and Plaquemines parishes, as well as parts of St. Charles and Terrebonne parishes. Restoration will vary by parish and neighborhood based on local transmission and distribution damage.”

New Orleans has been islanded before, by Hurricane Gustav in 2008. The New Orleans-Baton Rouge area was isolated from the grid for more than 33 hours when 14 transmission circuits tripped offline, requiring resynchronization.

Entergy’s online outage maps remain a mass of red in New Orleans, Baton Rouge and surrounding areas. The company reported 840,000 customers without power in Louisiana, down from a peak of more than 900,000. Entergy said it was able to nearly halve outages in Mississippi to about 25,000 from a peak of 46,000.

Eric Schouest, vice president of governmental affairs for Cleco Power, reported Tuesday that 98% of the company’s 97,000 customers were still without power. He also said that “restoration will be a multiweek event for some customers.”

MISO extended a conservative operations declaration through Thursday that was originally set to expire Tuesday. The declaration covers all of MISO South and asks that utilities cease all maintenance outages and return facilities to service, if possible.

MISO spokesman Brandon Morris said Entergy and other members are sharing damage assessment with RTO operators and engineers.

“Together we will create and implement a restoration plan. This coordination with our impacted members is critical to getting the power flowing again while maintaining stability to prevent the system from collapsing,” Morris said in an emailed statement to RTO Insider.

MISO did not comment on whether Entergy New Orleans had a nonpublic contingency plan in place that contemplated all eight of its transmission lines failing.

“Since the exact extent or nature of a restoration event cannot be predicted, procedures are prepared as general guidelines designed to be flexible in applications and adaptable to anticipated scenarios. While the requirement to submit the plans is public knowledge, the plans themselves are not,” Morris said.

He pointed out that MISO conducts annual power system restoration training with members, which involve drills on restoring their grids from blackout conditions.

The Edison Electric Institute reported that more than 25,000 workers from 32 states and D.C. have mobilized to assist Entergy in restoration. The group warned early on that damage assessment and restoration could take some time.

“In some cases, power restoration will require rebuilding energy infrastructure. Flooding creates a unique and dangerous restoration environment and can delay initial assessment efforts. In the hardest-hit areas, search and rescue and life safety will be the top priority,” EEI wrote as the storm was downgraded to a tropical storm Monday.