How crews are responding to power outages from Francine across the Gulf Coast

AccuWeather

Michael Considine, the Vice President for Power Delivery Operations of Entergy, spoke with AccuWeather on Sept. 12 to explain how their crews are working to restore power to thousands.

Transcript

00:00Energy provides energy to more than one million Louisiana customers.

00:04Michael Considine is Vice President for Power Delivery Operations for Energy,

00:09and that is a high-stakes job in a situation like this. So, Michael, you joined us

00:14yesterday and a couple days ago to talk about the plans ahead of the storm. So,

00:19did Hurricane Francine have maybe a greater or less impact on the grid that you anticipated?

00:25Well, thanks for having me again, Jeff. Well, you know, every storm's different.

00:31Obviously, Francine came across as a Category 2 at landfall. The track was a little bit east

00:37of where we anticipated. It dropped a lot of rain, as you know, and so we luckily,

00:44like we always do, we're prepared with adequate resources and we're able to quickly adapt to the

00:50little bit easterly track than what we originally thought, and we're able to respond and start

00:54restoration and damage assessment at daylight this morning, and pleased to announce that,

00:59you know, we're making great progress so far in our restoration and are making great progress to

01:05returning our customers' lives to normal. Very good. The majority of the power outages,

01:11at least by percentage of customers, were predictably in the area very close to landfall,

01:17some of the parishes like Terrebonne right along the Gulf Coast. Is it a little more difficult to

01:22restore power, even though maybe the volume of outages may be lower? Is it more difficult there?

01:28Are there more remote areas? Well, it does present certainly its own challenges in that area. I mean,

01:35a lot of marshland, for sure, so we have a lot of specialized equipment we use in that area.

01:41Marsh buggies, for example, airboats, we have all that equipment in place,

01:44pre-staged in those areas. We use quite a few helicopters to do the damage assessment.

01:50Those helicopters were in the air at first daylight, scouting and doing damage assessments

01:55so that we can get the materials in place and get the lines back in the air and the poles back in

02:00the ground. You know, that damage assessment is going on as well as just restoration where we

02:06can do so without having to replace equipment. We've seen great results from where we've,

02:12in previous storms, been able to build back to stronger standards in those areas where we've

02:18been able to do that from previous hurricanes. Those areas fared very well, so we're pleased

02:22with those results and where we have to go back and repair today and in the days to come. We expect

02:28to have great results in future storms that we know will happen. That's good to hear. Regarding

02:34safety for the crews that are out today, I know it's a little breezy still, but certainly the

02:37strongest winds are pulling away to the north, so is the wind and is the ongoing residual flooding

02:44much of a safety concern at this point, or are we kind of below those thresholds?

02:49We're below those thresholds. We're able to work in all areas of our service territory. There's no

02:54weather concerns at this point. You know, we had the storm obviously go up all the way through

02:59Mississippi that we serve. We expect to be able to wrap up the majority, if not all, of the

03:04energy Mississippi customers that we serve today. You know, if we have an outage or two pop up

03:09today, that might go into tomorrow, but anybody impacted from Princeton should be restored today

03:14in Mississippi. Obviously, we're working through providing estimations to estimated

03:19restoration times to our customers in Louisiana and Energy New Orleans later today, but we're

03:26making great progress on that effort. All right. Well, we appreciate all that you and the crews

03:31that you work with are doing to restore power to more and more people there in Mississippi,

03:37Louisiana, and beyond. Thanks again for joining us. Michael Considine,

03:40Vice President for Power Delivery Operations with Entergy.

03:45Thanks for having me. All right. Thank you, Michael. And as we take a look at the current

03:49state-by-state outages, again, Michael was speaking on behalf of Entergy. If we were to

03:52look at all customers that we are aware of through the poweroutage.us resources,

03:58among all different companies, here you can see some of the numbers there. And again,

04:02not all these are specifically from Entergy, but from various different co-ops and energy

04:06companies there. Still looking at well over 350,000 addresses without power across the South

04:13with a trend upwards in Tennessee, but downwards in Louisiana. We're seeing that trend continue.

04:20It seems that every hour we're seeing about 10,000 to 15,000 addresses restored in Louisiana,

04:26which is good news. Still the most challenging areas, what Michael talked about there,

04:30Terrebonne Parish there near Houma, where a tremendous percentage of customers there are

04:36without power.

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