Sky High Electric Bill? Here's Why! Interview with Our Executive Director Logan Burke by Jennifer Crockett

​Interview by Jennifer Crockett
Article originally published on WDSU News
​January 24, 2021

​AAE ​breaks down increases in Entergy New Orleans bills

Check out Jennifer Crockett's interview with our Executive Director Logan Burke & click "Read More" 
​​to learn more about what's causing these bill increases

Entergy New Orleans customers are reporting significant increases in their electricity bills this month. The Alliance for Affordable Energy said failures at two power plants are partially to blame.
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“Two of the major power plants that Entergy owns that serve New Orleans - Grand Gulf and another plant called Union were both down during November,” said Logan Burke, executive director of the Alliance for Affordable Energy. “We have to pay for those plants in addition to the power that the utility has to purchase from the grid to replace what the plants would have generated otherwise.”

The increase is recorded on a customer’s bill as a “fuel adjustment charge” or “fuel and purchased power cost.” That line item ballooned from $22 on one Uptown customer’s bill in December to $92 in January.

The utility is also incorporating a new fee to build a new power plant in New Orleans East, as well as paying about 12% more for natural gas, Burke said.

While the increases surprised customers when they received January’s bill in the mail, the utility did forewarn the New Orleans City Council of anticipated higher costs, in a letter dated Dec. 18.

In it, the utility writes: “ … the key driver of the variance is a $3.9 million increase in the fuel costs. Most of this increase is due to two generating plant outages, one at Grand Gulf Nuclear Station (“Grand Gulf”) and another at Union Power Station (“UPB1”). Grand Gulf entered an unplanned outage on November 6, 2020 during which necessary maintenance work was performed. Following completion of the unplanned outage, the unit entered a planned outage that ended on December 3. UPB1 took a planned outage to install a 2.0 MW emergency diesel generator, which outage lasted from October 23, 2020 to November 24, 2020."

City Council regulates the utility. The letter does not recommend any billing changes and asks the council to notify Entergy New Orleans by Dec. 23 if it “determines otherwise." Without noted objection from the council, the bills were printed and mailed. 

The higher electricity costs come at a time when Entergy New Orleans and Entergy Louisiana plan to resume discontinuing service to past due customers in February if they do not set up a payment plan. The utility said it had paused disconnections for 10 months because of the coronavirus pandemic.

A member of the staff at the New Orleans Council Utilities Regulators Office said analysts plan to meet Monday to address customers fuel adjustment concerns and Entergy's plan to disconnect past due customers.
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Entergy New Orleans said no one was available Sunday for an on camera interview, but in a statement to WDSU, wrote: “We take all customer concerns about billing seriously. We can’t determine what’s driving a customer’s high bill without working with them individually. There are a number of factors that may drive higher than normal bills and that includes a customer’s individual usage and colder winter temperatures. We encourage customers who have questions about their bills to call us at 1-800-Entergy so we can work with them.”

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About Jennifer Crockett

Jennifer Crockett worked her way up in news, starting out as the classifieds manager of Tiger Weekly (now DIG magazine) while attending Louisiana State University. She went on to become the editor in chief before graduating with a bachelor of arts degree in English, writing and culture in 2003. After her son was born in 2005, Jennifer took to the pen again, freelance writing for publishers in New York. In 2008, she set her sights on broadcast media, joining the ABC affiliate in Baton Rouge, WBRZ, in news and special projects. She made the transition to a general news reporting position at the NBC affiliate in Baton Rouge, WVLA, and went on to become the producer and anchor of the station’s morning news hour, "Morning Edition." In 2011, Jennifer chose to become a freelancer again and worked mostly on projects for the state’s FastStart program, a division of Louisiana Economic Development. Jennifer began discussing the move to New Orleans with WDSU management months before taking the leap, but now that she has landed in the Crescent City, she said she is blessed to be working in a city where friends are made fast and the news never stops.