Entergy is pushing back against suggestions that sturdier transmission infrastructure and more solar panels or microgrids would have helped the coastal Louisiana grid better endure hurricanes.
Entergy Louisiana CEO Phillip May said neither transmission reinforcements, solar generation, nor microgrids would have made for a nimbler restoration in New Orleans after Hurricane Ida. The company has been pressured on those points following the total blackout of the city after the hurricane’s strike last month. (See Experts Call for Tx Reinforcements, Microgrids in Gulf System After Ida.)
“The damage to our grid is driven by a storm that was nearly a category five. It is the second strongest storm to ever strike Louisiana,” May said during a Friday press conference. “The reason we have these outages … is because Mother Nature is the undisputed world champion. We can engineer some of the most robust structures, and Mother Nature will simply take those out in storms like this.”
He said Entergy has invested in a hardy system and continues to make infrastructure improvements.
“However, we have to balance the fact that perhaps a third of our customers are at or below the poverty level,” May said, adding Entergy cannot trade reasonably priced energy for clean and more localized energy. “Ideas like solar panels and microgrids certainly have their place, but we have to ensure they’re affordable,” he said. “In my mind, the notion that we haven’t invested in our grid is just flat wrong. The data refutes it. We are interested in microgrids and in adding solar.”
May said Entergy will have “enhanced infrastructure” where complete rebuilds are needed, as is the case with the transmission tower that toppled along the Mississippi River.
“But even with that, we know that there will always be a storm that can take out that infrastructure, whether it’s microgrids or the robust infrastructure that we continue to build,” he said.
In an emailed statement, Entergy said it will step up hardening and resiliency investments as climate impacts become more pronounced.
“While ensuring the resilience of our infrastructure has always been a primary focus, we recognize that we must accelerate our efforts in light of increasingly frequent and severe weather events,” the company said. “We will continue to refine our understanding of where the specific risks attributable to climate change are expected to become more severe in the years and decades ahead and focus our hardening efforts accordingly.”
Entergy pointed out that since 2016, it has completed $12.6 billion in transmission and distribution construction and has recently spent about $1 billion systemwide to upgrade plants and substations so they can better withstand hurricanes.
During a Sept. 9 media call, Entergy New Orleans CEO Deanna Rodriguez praised the new, natural gas-fired New Orleans Power Station, which she said performed “brilliantly” following Hurricane Ida.
“This is the plant that allowed first light to New Orleans nearly 48 hours after the storm,” Rodriguez said.
Critics have cast doubt on the plant’s black start capabilities, since Entergy opted out of starting the power station without first establishing a transmission link to the Eastern Interconnection. (See Entergy Touts Restoration; NOLA Leaders Question Lack of Blackstart Service.) More than 500,000 customers remained offline amid triple-digit heat indexes in Louisiana the week after Labor Day.
MISO Vice President of System Planning Jennifer Curran said Entergy’s transmission system withstood the storm better than in past hurricanes. She said the utility’s distribution system, however, took a more punishing hit.
Curran said as of Sept. 15, all major transmission has been restored except for a few towers that were directly in the storm’s path.
“At this point, neither transmission or generation are limiting the restoration of load,” Curran said during a Wednesday System Planning Committee teleconference of the MISO Board of Directors.
But Ida’s fallout may force Entergy to reckon with climate-change activists. They had harsh words for Entergy last week during a press conference hosted by the Gulf Coast Center for Law and Policy (GCCLP).
The group’s executive director, Colette Pichon Battle, said she is a resident of St. Tammany Parish on the north shore of Lake Ponchartrain.
“I’m calling in from Texas because my family, like so many others, is still evacuated from southern Louisiana,” she said.
Pichon Battle said Ida’s landfall on the 16th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina is an “eerie reminder” that climate change is affecting the Gulf of Mexico’s coastal regions now.
“The energy infrastructure is not built to withstand climate change,” she said of the Entergy grid.
Jessica Dandridge, executive director of the Water Collaborative of Greater New Orleans, said she rode out the storm, but was then forced to stay with friends in Mississippi and then Michigan.
Dandridge said the failures of Entergy, a Fortune 500 company with billions in earnings, were unacceptable. She urged others to push utilities on grid resilience and renewable energy, pointing to residential rooftop solar and microgrids.
“We have given everything, all our savings … our homes, our family heirlooms,” she said, saying it was time for the utility to invest in the community.
“We as a nation cannot take the same approach,” said Jennifer Crosslin, with both Southern Communities for a New Deal and GCCLP. “This moment calls for our nation do something it never has really done before.”
Crosslin said climate justice and climate equity have become “hollow promises” from southern leaders.
In 2019, Entergy New Orleans was resistant to the city council’s resilient renewable portfolio standard requiring net-zero emissions by 2040 and 100% clean energy by 2050. It threatened to sue New Orleans if it was forced to prematurely retire generation resources.
“… [A]ny standard adopted in this proceeding that would require [Entergy New Orleans] to retire council-approved resources before the end of their useful lives, or that would penalize [it] for operating those resources in a manner consistent with prior council approvals, would be unenforceable and lead to litigation,” the utility warned in late 2019.
Entergy said New Orleans’ renewable portfolio and climate resilience standard would lead to “needless rate increases” that would cause the “entire regional economy to suffer.”
New Orleans approved the RPS in May after two years of negotiations.
