Highlights from Today’s NOLA Council Meeting

10.24.2024

Reliability & Resilience

Utility Regulation

New Orleans City Council

Entergy New Orleans

Renewable Energy

At today’s New Orleans City Council meeting, Councilmembers voted to approve two resolutions for investments in the city’s resilience.

The Council opened a new docket to evaluate ways to increase the availability of distributed energy resources and create a vendor-neutral distributed battery and microgrid program (consent agenda item 24).

Let's break down what that means

A docket is a public process through which the Council receives input from the public and takes action on important energy issues.
Distributed energy resources are technologies that generate or store electricity close to where it’s used – think rooftop solar panels and battery storage. Unlike large power plants that send electricity across long distances, DERs provide power right where people need it, helping to keep the lights on during outages and making the overall power grid more reliable. DERs can also include your water heater or AC unit, if you set it to NOT use power during a time of high demand.
Vendor-neutral means that anyone can participate.
Microgrids are a type of DER that can operate while the main grid is down. They are made up of different local energy resources, like rooftop solar and battery storage, that generate, store, and distribute electricity to residents and businesses. They are connected to the main grid, but can also disconnect and operate independently. Meaning if there’s an outage, microgrids can still keep the lights on.

This vote follows a proposal from Together New Orleans and the Alliance for Affordable Energy asking the Council to invest up to $32 million in battery systems across homes and community resilience hubs, without raising customers’ bills. The goal of our proposal, as well as the new docket, is to provide reliable backup power during outages and offer everyday grid support. The initiating resolution, R-24-624, was already approved by the Council’s Climate Change & Sustainability Committee on October 9, and it has now received final approval from the full Council.

The Council also voted to approve resolution R-24-625, which allocates a $100M investment for Entergy New Orleans to upgrade and harden power poles (consent agenda item 25). This resolution was also initially approved by the Council’s Climate Change & Sustainability Committee on October 9. The cost of this investment won’t impact your bills, since the Council was able to secure a settlement from Entergy earlier this year to resolve other issues.

You can get involved by attending New Orleans City Council meetings in person or virtually. Offer your input and make your voice heard by submitting a comment either in-person or online.

The next New Orleans City Council meeting is scheduled for November 7, 2024. We’ll share information about energy items on the agenda that could affect you on our social media after the Council posts the agenda.