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Entergy shares explanation for recent power outages affecting thousands
By Rick Gogreve,
2 days ago
NEW ORLEANS ( WGNO ) — There have been two outages over the past two days leaving thousands of New Orleans residents without power once again.
“Big surprise because it was a big power outage and three hours for no reason at all. There’s no storm. I mean imagine what it’s going to be when storm season hits,” New Orleans resident Walter Cousin said.
Entergy leaders told reporters that the outages occurred when two pieces of infrastructure called lightning arresters absorbed too much charge over a series of weeks and finally gave out.
“We have them on our transformers, we have them on our substations, we have them on a lot of our equipment to be that sacrificial piece of equipment to stop larger damages,” Entergy New Orleans Vice President of Reliability Steven Benyard said.
Entergy plans to replace older lighting arresters with newer models that are expected to be more weather-resistant.
“The newer models are learned from all our mistakes of the past, new technologies, how to seal these things; and the manufacturers are getting better and better so these type of surge arresters can take a lot more of a beating,” Benyard said.
Eventually, Entergy plans on upgrading the entire grid. In March, the company filed a three-year accelerated resilience plan with the New Orleans City Council, but it has yet to be approved.
“We live here too. We are working through all of this. We continue to invest in what we know is important to every customer that we have and we’re always working to do better,” Entergy New Orleans President & CEO Deanna Rodriguez said.
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