May 13, 2008 - Teamwork Yields Safe, Speedy South Louisiana Transmission Restoration

When a 115kV transmission line serving areas south of New Orleans unexpectedly went out of service on May 9, and warmer than seasonal temperatures already pointed to increased load, those factors triggered a positive teamwork chain reaction. The unplanned outage had put the remaining transmission line serving areas south of New Orleans toward Buras, La. at risk of serious overload.

Manage Load; Repair Damage; Communicate

The outage and increased demand prompted an Entergy operating subcommittee conference call to develop and recommend to management how best to handle the situation with minimal impact on customers.

System operations center and transmission planning staff, SP&O, System Outage Response, customer service, regulatory affairs, fossil generation operations and corporate communications were among the participants.

The consensus plan the operating subcommittee proposed included configuring the system for rotating 15MW blocks of Louisiana load south of New Orleans to be shed in 20 minute intervals, notifying customers whose contracts provided for interruption of service and communicating with public officials in a timely manner.

The clear communication and timely responses among multiple functions within Entergy caused this emergency to be handled without significant customer impact.

A restoration team from transmission’s Louisiana asset management group moved to the site safely and quickly. They repaired the damaged structure in a difficult to access location from airboats in a timely manner without any safety incidents.

“This kind of teamwork is what Entergy does so well. Customers may take this kind of quick, safe response for granted, but all groups involved and all Entergy employees should take pride in how our company handles these situations,” noted Transmission Vice President Randy Helmick.