NEW ORLEANS — It’s the largest single investment in New Orleans’ electrical grid ever which the Climate Change and Sustainability Committee gave its stamp of approval to move forward with Tuesday.
“We all know that increasing the resiliency and reliability of our grid is incredibly important,” said Committee Chair and Council President Helena Moreno.
In the wake of Hurricane Ida, called on Entergy New Orleans to come up with projects to make the city’s electrical infrastructure more dependable.
“They submitted a variety of different projects, all throughout the city. The total cost was roughly a billion dollars, phase one alone was about half a billion dollars,” said Moreno.
Three projects got committee approval on Tuesday. One is a distribution project, which means new utility poles and wires. The second is a battery storage system, charged by solar. The third is a transmission line project that would put new towers across Lake Pontchartrain and into New Orleans East.
“That’s probably one of the most important projects that we can do because after Hurricane Ida, you’ll probably remember, that it was because of transmission failures that we ended up being the dark,” said Moreno.
Moreno is talking about a massive transmission line that collapsed, cutting off the flow of power into the city, and leaving most people in the dark for at least a week.
All three projects will cost about $106 million. Half of the money is coming from the federal government. Ratepayers will pay the rest.
“It’s a 20-cent impact on your monthly bill and then beyond this point, the five-year projection is that it’ll go to roughly $1.50,” said Moreno.
Councilman JP Morrell is concerned any projects that go over budget will only add to those costs.
“Cost overruns in the utility community for infrastructure investment are not the exception, they’re the norm,” said Morrell.
Representatives from Entergy New Orleans say the benefits of the projects outweigh the costs and want the council to approve the more than 660 other projects as well.
“We’re not proposing something to enrich ourselves, this is truly what we recommend and believe the city needs to make it more resilient and to withstand the storms that we’re seeing,” said Entergy New Orleans Vice President of Regulatory and Public Affairs Courtney Nicholson.
Councilmembers say standards and metrics will be built to determine whether projects are beneficial.
“Because what’s the point of building a bunch of stuff but, what if it never makes us any safer because we’re not measuring it and here, we go, we just passed on all these expenses to our ratepayers,” said Moreno.
The full city council still must give approval for these projects to happen. A vote on that is expected at the February 22nd council meeting.