Entergy New Orleans ‘Accelerated Resilience Plan’ to harden the grid across the City received approval today in a full vote of the New Orleans City Council. Today’s vote is the first step in a wholesale upgrade of the City’s electric infrastructure, intended to keep the lights on longer when a storm strikes, and restore power more quickly if service is disrupted.
“The impact of stronger and more severe weather makes investing in Resilience absolutely critical to the future of our city,” said Deanna Rodriguez, president and CEO of Entergy New Orleans. “We thank the Council for this important first step towards hardening the grid and protecting the city’s infrastructure.”
After Hurricane Ida, Entergy New Orleans submitted a 10-year, $1B resilience plan. Under the agreement approved today, Entergy New Orleans can begin implementing the two-year $100m plan that the Council has approved.
The first phase of work, to be completed in 2025-2026, will include 65 individual projects, strengthening 3,096 structures, and upgrading 63 electric line miles. Total cost for the initial tranche is estimated to be $100M over a two-year period. Entergy New Orleans will be providing information on its Resilience website that shows which neighborhoods will benefit from these projects.
There will be no bill impacts for Entergy customers resulting from the projects approved today.
Entergy New Orleans routinely invests in repairs and upgrades to our power infrastructure, but the work beginning under this plan will represent the most comprehensive grid update in the city’s history. When combined with the GRIP grant funded infrastructure projects approved by the Council in January, today’s approval represents a $200M investment in making the grid stronger. Entergy New Orleans has been awarded a Department of Energy grant which will offset $55M of these costs.
Entergy used a data-driven approach to meticulously evaluate thousands of potential storm scenarios to identify these projects, many of which involve replacing existing utility poles with stronger ones designed to withstand higher winds and more extreme weather events.
The anticipated benefits of the overall resilience plan include improvements in the everyday reliability of electric service, and customer savings related to shortening post-storm outages. By mitigating the restoration costs and outages resulting from future extreme weather events, the plan will help shorten evacuations and time away from home and work, ultimately helping New Orleans communities get back on their feet more quickly.
