As Beta drenches Gulf Coast, Alabama, Florida, Louisiana utilities restore grid

New York — As Tropical Storm Beta drenches the Texas Gulf Coast, utilities in Alabama, Florida and Louisiana worked on Sept. 21 to restore electricity to customers previously cut off by hurricanes Laura and Sally, and the Louisiana utilities were bracing for Beta's impact.

And this latest storm has prompted port authorities along a wide swath of the Gulf Coast to suspend pilot services.

The National Hurricane Center's 4 pm CT bulletin said Beta was about 25 southeast of Port O'Connor, Texas, at the southern end of Matagorda Bay, with maximum sustained winds of 45 mph, traveling northwest at 5 mph.

A storm surge warning – 1 to 4 feet -- was in effect for Port Aransas, Texas, to the Sabine Pass at the Louisiana state line, and tropical-storm-force winds extended outward as much as 175 miles from the center.

Rainfall accumulations of 5 to 10 inches were likely, with isolated totals of 15 inches from the mid-Texas coast to southeast Louisiana, with totals of 3 to 5 inches inland as far as the area around the intersections of Arkansas, Louisiana and Texas state lines.

"A tornado or two could occur through Tuesday near the middle to upper Texas coast or the southwestern Louisiana coast," the bulletin said.

As of about 3 pm CT Sept. 21, about 60,000 electricity customers customers were offline from western Louisiana to the Florida Panhandle as a result of hurricanes Laura and Sally.

Alabama had the largest number offline due to Sally, at 31,830, mostly due to Baldwin Electric Membership Corporation and Riviera Utilities, a municipal power company. Sally made landfall early Sept. 16, knocking more than 540,000 customers offline across Alabama, Florida, Georgia and Mississippi.

"Employees of Baldwin EMC are working diligently to restore power as safely and quickly as possible," a post on the website said Sept. 21. "However, due to the widespread damage, the company does expect extended outages."

Riviera Utilities' website posting as of 11 am ET said it had restored power to about 31,500 meters with 19,000 more to go.

"Currently, there are approximately 400 linemen and vegetation management personnel assisting in the restoration efforts," the Riviera Utilities post states.

No one at Baldwin EMC or Riviera Utilities responded to requests for further comment.

Florida's Gulf Power, which had just 5,673 customers offline as of 3 pm CT Sept. 21, estimated it would have restored service to about 80% of those customers by midnight that night.

Louisiana conditions

With the second-largest total of customers offline at 16,590, Louisiana's Beauregard Electric Cooperative and Entergy Louisiana have had to rebuild after the strongest hurricane to hit Louisiana since 1856 tore apart the electric transmission and distribution system starting Aug. 27.

"One of the main issues with restoring power has been the vast amount of trees that Laura destroyed," Kay Fox, Beauregard vice president for marketing and member services, said in a Sept. 21 email. "Also, heat has played a factor since some of the linemen travel from areas that experienced 40 degree weather to South Louisiana where the temperatures have risen to the high 90s."

The cooperative "anticipates power to be restored to all by September 30, assuming ... Beta doesn't wreak more havoc in our service area," Fox said.

As for Entergy Louisiana, the company on Sept. 21 said it had "replaced 13,633 of 14,125 damaged distribution poles, 3,760 of 4,760 damaged transformers and replaced 29,358 of 29,831 damaged spans of wire" in its distribution system.

On the transmission side, it had repaired or replaced 808 of 1,459 damaged structures, 2,483 of 2,792 miles of damaged line and 296 of 316 damaged substations, Entergy said.

"As a result of extensive damage to the transmission infrastructure serving this area, the transmission and distribution systems will require nearly a complete rebuild," the company said, adding that its "restoration workforce stands ready to respond to poetntial impacts of Tropical Storm Beta."

Shipping effects

Ahead of Beta's landfall along a wide swath of the Texas and Louisiana Gulf Coast, pilot services were suspended or restricted within the channels that serve Cheniere's Sabine Pass and Corpus Christi Liquefaction facilities as well as Sempra Energy's Cameron LNG. That was expected to impact tankers in the vicinity of the export terminals.

Gas deliveries to Sabine Pass fell Sept. 21 compared with a week earlier, while they remained stable at Corpus Christi. Gas deliveries to Cameron LNG remained at zero as the terminal's three trains continued to be offline due to damage to power infrastructure from Hurricane Laura in late August.

Freeport LNG, south of Houston, was planning to maintain operations through Beta, as of Sept. 21, according to a spokeswoman. Those plans could change depending on the intensity and track of the storm. Feedgas flows to the terminal fell substantially ahead of the storm from levels a week earlier, S&P Global Platts Analytics data show.