Two weeks after Laura, about 115,000 customers still lack electric service

Houston — About 115,000 power customers still lacked service two weeks after Hurricane Laura slammed into the southwest Louisiana coast, and utilities say restoring service to the remainder may take weeks.

Hardest hit was New Orleans-based Entergy, where almost 80,000 customers in southwestern Louisiana lacked service as of about 2 pm CT Sept. 10, down from almost 120,000 customers across its four-state footprint on Sept. 3.

"Entergy Louisiana successfully restarted one of its power plants in Calcasieu Parish Sept 9," the company said in a Sept. 10 news release. "This achievement paves the way for restoring power to additional communities impacted by Hurricane Laura in Sulphur and Lake Charles.

"The company expects it may be late September before power is available to most customers in Southwest Louisiana who can safely receive it. Due to the complexity of the restoration effort, restoring power may take longer for some customers in the region," the company said.

During the Public Utility Commission of Texas' Sept. 10 meeting, Entergy Texas President and CEO Sallie Rainer said that at the peak of the outages, her utility had about 291,000 customers without power, as the most powerful storm to hit the Louisiana-Texas Gulf Coast in more than 150 years on Aug. 27 tore down about 60 miles of transmission lines and put eight of nine transmission lines serving the East Texas load pocket out of service.

As this massive destruction removed the redundancy necessary to avoid a cascading blackout of the grid, the Midcontinent Independent System Operator and Southwest Power Pool agreed that rolling blackouts should be implemented to reduce load by more than 300 MW, Rainer said.

"After 10 days, we were able to restore 100% of the power customers who were able to take service," Rainer said, noting that some customers, because of damage within their property, may be unable to safely receive electricity.

Electric co-op challenged

On Sept. 10, MISO extended until 10 pm ET on Sept. 18 its Conservative Operations declaration – requiring the suspension of all transmission and generation maintenance – in the area of Louisiana affected by the storm.

DiRidder, Louisiana-based Beauregard Electric Cooperative had the second-largest total of customers without power, almost 33,000 as of about 2 pm CT Sept. 10, equal to about 76% of its customers. During the height of the storm and for days thereafter, Beauregard had virtually all of its almost 43,000 customers without service.

In a Sept. 9 media release, BEC General Manager Kevin Turner said, "Our outage numbers continue to drop every day."

In a Sept. 7 media release, BEC said, "Full restoration is estimated to take at least three weeks. Some members may be out longer depending on the damage in their area."

The co-op has about 1,100 linemen working to restore power, but they have occasionally been slowed down by customers asking for information, the release states.

"Our linemen have felt the outpouring of support and southern hospitality from our members and we are very thankful for that," BEC spokeswoman Danielle Tilley said. "But if a linemen takes ten minutes to explain restoration to six different people, that is one hour longer our members are going to have to wait to get their power restored, and those hours add up."

Pineville, Louisiana-based Cleco had the third-largest number of customers without service as of about 2 pm CT Sept. 10, at 3,436, with most of those in Beauregard and Calcasieu parishes. James Lass, Cleco's director of distribution operations and emergency management, said, "We're steadily making progress."