The total blackout that has engulfed New Orleans since Hurricane Ida was able to rise (at least slightly) in late Wednesday, they called a call to Entergy New Orleans executives.
This is long before what some had feared after Ida’s devastating winds wiped out the eight transmission lines connecting New Orleans with the wider power grid. Not much was known about the plan on Tuesday afternoon, but it was expected that even if power were restored to feed the city’s most important needs, normal residents and businesses would take much longer to turn on the lights and load them. devices and use air conditioning as a respite for the dangerous heat of summer.
New Orleans and surrounding parishes have been in the dark since the power outages when Ida attacked the area Sunday evening, when winds wrecked a transmission tower along the Mississippi River and left seven more offline. . Many expected the process of reconnecting the city to the electricity grid or the possibility of offering an alternative means of supplying electricity to hospitals, critical infrastructure, residents and businesses to last a minimum of one week.
But Entergy executives told the board (which regulates the power company) that at least the first step to regaining power could be in effect the next day.
Entergy did not respond to repeated requests for comment on the information they shared Tuesday with the council.
But after a briefing on Tuesday morning, Councilwoman Helena Moreno said the company had estimated that they would have electricity again relatively quickly. He said he expected some power in 48 hours, another person who called said Entergy expected to have electricity on Wednesday at midnight.
The power outage is much more than the typical outages caused by most hurricanes, where large swathes of residents and businesses run out of electricity. Cut off from the electricity grid, there is no electricity in the city, including electricity for critical functions such as managing hospitals and feeding the Sewerage & Water Board’s drainage, sewer and water systems. In other words, the health centers run on generating energy and the S&WB relies on its crisp, old turbines, which have so far survived.
Entergy Louisiana President and CEO Philip May said the day after the storm that the damage caused by Ida was still being assessed, but that he hoped significant problems would be revealed that would take a week or more to restore. the first customers.
Moreno said Entergy was looking for two potential options to restore energy. One would be to quickly fix at least some of the transmission lines, allowing the city to re-access the national electricity grid and get at least some of its electricity needs. A second option would be to make New Orleans an “island,” temporarily separated from the larger power grid and draw its power directly from the plants of New Orleans East and West Bank.
The latter option would provide more than 600 megawatts of power to the city, half the amount normally needed. But that option would also mean that if something goes wrong with one of the plants it would be harder to get energy from other places, Moreno said.
Entergy has been criticized for the outages, especially since it had sold its controversial new gas-fired power plant in New Orleans East to make sure the city would have energy quickly after a storm. This plant alone has only about a tenth of the generation capacity the city normally needs.
A decision on what usage approach was expected at the end of Tuesday.
The exact amount of power available will depend on the number of transmission lines that can be put back online in a short time. One of those lines was removed when a transmission tower collapsed during the storm, but Entergy is still assessing the damage to the others.
Moreno said Entergy hopes to make a decision on which path to choose this afternoon.
“I think the best option would be to reconnect to the grid, but if that’s not feasible, we need to regain power as soon as possible,” Moreno said.
“We need to turn on the power again, I don’t want people to despair or get sicker from these conditions,” he said, adding that the council has received calls from people in dire situations because they need electricity for medical devices. .