If you live or work in New Orleans you have probably wondered why we have such frequent power outages. It turns out you are not the only one. After repeated phone calls from residents and businesses who were left in the dark, the City Council has now opened an investigation, docket UD-17-04, into the root causes of these outages and will be requiring Entergy to implement a plan to fix the problem.
Individuals, businesses neighborhood groups, and civic organizations can stay abreast of the issue and have their voice heard by joining the proceeding, but the request form must be submitted by this Friday, August 25th.
So far the investigation has revealed that there were 2,599 separate outage events in the one year period from June 2016 through May 2017, of which 1,462 occurred under fair weather conditions. Outages have been occurring all over the city, but some neighborhoods have been affected with even greater frequency. Residents of Council Districts C and D have been especially hard hit, each having had over 700 separate outages.
According to data from the utility, 98% of outages occurred due to problems affecting the distribution grid, 2% were related to transmission, and none of the outages were related to power generation. But Entergy has in recent months been frequently arguing that they want to build a new power plant to address reliability issues. The fact is a power plant would do nothing to stop the power outages that have been happening and major repairs to their neglected distribution grid would still be needed.
Ultimately, Entergy has an obligation to maintain their distribution infrastructure to ensure reliability and prevent outages, but they have let it fall into disrepair. The Council is right to investigate the issue and to hold the utility accountable. As customers, we all pay our monthly utility bills and we deserve better.
The Alliance for Affordable Energy has taken an in-depth look into these issues, you can read more in our whitepaper, Outages, Reliability, Resilience.
Your voice is important and it is relatively easy to participate. Click here for a template that you can use to join the proceeding or view below. It takes only about 15 minutes to fill out and any further involvement is entirely optional, but the deadline to sign up is this Friday, August 25th. A signed original and three copies should be delivered to the Clerk of Council’s office on the first floor of City Hall.
View the Council’s resolution initiating the investigation under docket UD-17-04.
Please contact us with any questions and let us help you fill in and submit your request to join the proceeding. Call us 504-2008-7597 or email us info@all4energy.org.
