An extended Memorial Day weekend is just long enough for a story to churn through the American news cycle, so you’re not alone if you missed hearing about the widespread power outages that impacted around 100,000 Entergy and Cleco customers on Sunday, especially since service has since been restored to “nearly all” those affected.
But for people who call southeast Louisiana home, this is hardly a ‘forgive-and-forget’ situation, especially on the doorstep of a scorching summer and hurricane season. People are demanding answers, and they’re starting to get some.
What Happened?
On Sunday evening, the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO) directed Entergy Louisiana and Entergy New Orleans, utilities serving millions of Louisianans, to periodically shut off power to some customers. Specifically, the regional grid operator asked Entergy and Cleco to reduce load by 600 megawatts (MW) to “maintain the reliability of the bulk electric system.”
“Entergy New Orleans is currently subject to a load-shed order from MISO,” an Entergy New Orleans spokesperson revealed Sunday. “Our crews will work as quickly and safely as possible to restore service, as soon as we are clear to do so.”
As of 5:30 pm Sunday, 52,267 Entergy customers were without power in Orleans Parish, 36,201 in Jefferson Parish, 6,511 in Plaquemines Parish, and 6,011 in St. Bernard Parish.
Load-shedding, or “brownouts,” are forced reductions in electric load intended to prevent a larger grid failure (blackout) during times of strain on the system.
“High temperatures in Louisiana led to higher-than-expected demand, and with planned and unplanned transmission and generation outages, MISO needed to take this action as a very last resort,” the grid operator explained in a social media post.
Unplanned Outages, You Say?
While the sweeping outages were initially blamed on hotter-than-average temperatures and corresponding high electricity consumption, some slick reporting from WWL Louisiana and NOLA.com quickly uncovered more to the story. It turns out not one, but two of the region’s nuclear power plants were offline Sunday, greatly reducing the amount of power MISO had to work with.
Public Service Commissioner Davante Lewis told WWL Louisiana that Waterford 3 in Killona, on the west bank of St. Charles Parish, was scheduled to be offline for maintenance. River Bend in St. Francisville, north of Baton Rouge, unexpectedly tripped offline on Sunday, and quickly, there wasn’t enough energy to meet demand.
“For a scheduled outage to occur and a generator to fail simply should not cause a load shedding event,” Lewis said. “That means there’s more to the story, either bad forecasting, bad modeling, or higher demand than was projected.”
According to Lewis, Sunday’s brownout was Louisiana’s third since April, a simply unacceptable frequency.
While it’s still unclear why River Bend failed, Entergy had previously scheduled Waterford 3 to be down Sunday afternoon for regularly scheduled refueling and maintenance.
“Entergy typically conducts maintenance on its utility plants in the spring and fall, when loads are lower,” an Entergy spokesperson detailed. “The Waterford 3 maintenance and refueling outage was conducted in accordance with that policy and was planned months ahead.”
The People Want The Truth
A few hours after MISO’s orders caused Entergy to cut off power to more than half of its customers on one of the hottest days of the year so far (and on a holiday weekend, no less), the directive was canceled.
“MISO comprises a pool of electricity generators and users that stretches from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico, and as reliability coordinator is responsible for monitoring the portion of the electric grid it oversees and providing instructions to its members regarding actions needed to maintain reliability in that portion of the grid. In extreme circumstances, such actions may include these types of outages currently occurring,” MISO offered in a statement.
That does little for the folks affected, who are rightfully displeased about the whole ordeal. New Orleans City Council President JP Morrell, Council Vice President Helena Moreno, and Public Service Commissioner Lewis have since issued a joint statement making it clear that “the public deserves clear answers.”
“We are not only frustrated by the lack of timely notification to both the utility and regulators, and it appears that New Orleans bore the brunt of this forced outage,” the statement said in part. “We are urgently working to uncover the facts.”
New Orleans City Council members said Entergy told the council that MISO gave the utility just a three-minute warning before shutting off power.
“There are lots of questions that need answering,” asserted Council member Joe Giarrusso.
“Why did New Orleans get whacked by MISO? Why were we selected?” Moreno added. “That needs to be explained.”
Meanwhile, Entergy and CenterPoint Energy crews are working to get the lights back on for hundreds of thousands of Texas customers in the wake of slow-moving storms boasting wind gusts up to 70 miles per hour. As of noon Tuesday, CenterPoint reported restoring power to more than 130,000 of approximately 167,000 affected customers.
Originally published in Factor This.