Entergy (NYSE:ETR) on Friday announced that most of its Louisiana customers affected by Hurricane Ida will see their power restored by Sept. 9, while cautioning that restoration in the hardest hit areas “will be a rebuild more than a repair.”

In a press conference Friday morning, Entergy Louisiana CEO Phillip May said the utility had returned power to 225,000 customers in Louisiana, of the 904,000 who lost power after the storm. Deanna Rodriguez, CEO of Entergy New Orleans, reported that a third of the eight major transmission lines serving the Greater New Orleans area are back in service, joining the two that the utility had restored earlier in the week. (See Entergy Energizes Second Tx Line, Generator.)

Separately, Entergy Mississippi announced that 4,000 customers in Mississippi remain without power, down from the peak of around 46,000.

About 3,500 of the outages in Mississippi are from Hurricane Ida; the rest are related to thunderstorms on Wednesday. Entergy Mississippi said it expects “the majority of customers affected by both storms” to be restored by Friday night. Some customer outages may take until Saturday to be resolved, and individual cases may take longer depending on the circumstances, the company said.

Damage Assessments Still Unfinished

Entergy listed the following estimated restoration times for Louisiana:

• Sept. 3: Port Allen (Pointe Coupee, West Baton Rouge and Iberville Parishes); Zachary (East and West Feliciana Parishes);
• Sept. 4: Central Business District (CBD) of New Orleans;
• Sept. 6: Baton Rouge Metro (East Baton Rouge Parish);
• Sept. 7: Gonzales (Gonzales and parts of Ascension Parish); Denham Springs; Chalmette (St. Bernard and upperparts of Plaquemines Parish);
• Sept. 8: Metairie-Kenner; Westbank (Westbank of Jefferson Parish); Algiers; New Orleans East; Orleans Parish.

The utility stressed that its estimates are general; some communities within these networks will see their power restored earlier than their estimated dates.

Entergy has not managed to estimate restoration times for “the hardest hit areas,” May said, citing “communication issues, access issues [and] vegetation issues.”

About 29% of the damaged areas in Louisiana remain unassessed. Those that remain include communities in the direct path of the storm — coastal areas like Grand Isle and Lafourche Parish, as well as inland parishes such as St. John and St. Charles. These were among the areas that May referred to as requiring a “rebuild” rather than repair.

Distribution Infrastructure Damage ‘Tremendous’

John Hawkins, Entergy Louisiana’s vice president of distribution operations, said Entergy Louisiana and Entergy New Orleans have found damage to 14,364 poles, 16,702 spans of wire and 3,232 transformers on their distribution systems.

“This part of the grid has received tremendous damage from Hurricane Ida, [but] in the coming days, we’re going to start to see a lot more progress,” Hawkins said.

Restoration efforts so far have focused on critical infrastructure such as hospitals, cooling shelters, and water and sewer systems, rather than residential neighborhoods. However, participants in Friday’s call noted that residences may see their power restored if they are on the same circuit as these services.

Rodriguez acknowledged receiving “a lot of questions” about why the CBD and French Quarter, both of which are currently largely unoccupied, are being restored prior to residences. She explained that this was considered necessary because these areas contain hotels that are being used to house many of the 5,000 workers from out of state who are assisting with the restoration efforts in the city. Nearly 26,000 emergency workers are involved in restoration efforts statewide.

“All of these restoration workers have to have places to stay, so the CBD is hosting a lot of these workers,” Rodriguez said. “Unless they have a place to sleep at night, they can’t work their 16-hour days that we’re requiring them to work. So while it seems counterintuitive, it’s a good thing that we have the CBD up.”

Slidell Line Used as ‘Shock Absorber’

Friday’s call did not address the questions about grid planning raised in the immediate aftermath of the storm, which knocked out all eight transmission corridors into Greater New Orleans and plunged the city into a complete blackout. (See Entergy Investigations Certain to Follow Hurricane Ida Restoration.) The area remained without power until Tuesday, when Entergy managed to re-energize a small portion of the city using the 128-MW New Orleans Power Station and a line across Lake Pontchartrain via Slidell.

Asked if the line is “looping power from Cleco,” which is basing its own recovery efforts in Slidell, May acknowledged that the line “does connect to Cleco.” However, he said Entergy’s goal with that line is not to import power from another area but to stabilize the system.

“Ideally, we’re not seeing a lot of power flow either into or out of that line; what we’re doing is using that line as a shock absorber … so if we do have trips, the system can remain intact,” May said. “As we restore more lines, that becomes less and less important because it becomes more robust, more redundant. But that’s what we’re doing right now.”

As of 3 p.m. Friday, Cleco (NYSE:CNL) said it had restored power to nearly 54,000 of the nearly 97,000 customers in St. Tammany Parish who lost electricity.

MISO Delays New Market User Interface

Because of the hurricane’s havoc, MISO announced it held off on the launch of its new market user interface by a week. The nonpublic interface ― where market participants submit bids and offers ― is part of the RTO’s market platform replacement.

MISO IT Senior Director Curtis Reister said MISO will now launch parallel operations of the old interface and the new beginning Sept. 8.

“We very much wanted to start parallel operations, but it didn’t make sense last week,” he told members at a Market Subcommittee meeting on Sept. 2.

The new market user interface test environment has been open for market participant testing since last April. Parallel operations of the old system and the new will last for four months, with MISO retiring the current system Jan. 18.

Amanda Durish Cook contributed to this story.