Entergy Louisiana has begun phase one of its comprehensive grid resilience plan for customers to experience lesser amount of power outages following severe weather strikes.
The comprehensive resilience plan will fortify electric infrastructure statewide, enhancing the power grid and community resilience while safeguarding Louisiana’s economic well-being, over the next five years.
The initial phase includes 2,100 projects targeting 69,000 distribution and transmission structures. Hardening measures include replacing electric equipment such as poles, guy wires, anchors and power lines to meet the latest wind loading design standards.
In the Lake Charles area, the company will invest around $107 million over three years to harden the grid, including upgrading approximately 4,275 distribution poles to withstand winds up to 125 mph and 115 transmission structures to endure winds up to 150 mph, covering a total of 148 miles of transmission and distribution power lines.
The first project, under progress in the Oak Park area, comprises of hardening about 315 distribution poles, covering over five miles of power lines.
Entergy Louisiana used a data-driven approach to evaluate many potential storm scenarios to develop its comprehensive grid resilience plan and identify priority projects. The plan’s anticipated benefits include approximately $1.2 billion in avoided future storm restoration costs, improvements in everyday electric service reliability and customer savings related to reduced post-storm outages.
By mitigating restoration costs and outages from future extreme weather events, the resilience plan will help shorten evacuations and reduce time away from home and work, assisting Louisiana communities to recover immediately.
