Storm Center

Entergy's Storm Readiness - Planning, Preparation, and Drilling

Entergy’s service territory is a diverse land stretching from the flat, coastal plains and bayous of the Gulf of Mexico through the piney woods to the mountains of Arkansas. Depending on the time of year, hurricanes, tornadoes, ice and snowstorms or severe thunderstorms can cause a major emergency. Entergy employees deal with severe weather on a regular basis, and they are nationally recognized for their skill and dedication.

Entergy is the only utility company in the country to win either the Edison Electric Institute’s Emergency Response Award or its Emergency Assistance Award for five consecutive years -- in fact they have won an award every year since its inception. The Emergency Response Award honors companies for exemplary efforts to restore electric power interrupted by extreme weather conditions or other natural events. The Emergency Assistance Award honors power companies for mutual assistance to other EEI members.

Planning, preparation, and performance are the three most important reasons Entergy is nationally recognized for its emergency response capabilities.

Entergy’s Storm Response Plan is a comprehensive, highly-detailed document that directs the activities of hundreds of people and spells out clearly the preparations and procedures to be followed depending on the nature of the emergency. It emphasizes public and employee safety before, during and after the storm.

Annual storm drills, along with planning and preparation, help employees hone their skills and test their ability to respond to unforeseen circumstances.

An outside consultant watches every drill and makes recommendations for improvements that are incorporated into the storm plan.

Mutual Assistance Agreements

During routine outage events, utility companies in the United States use their own crews and/or contractors to restore power. In the event of a major storm, however, the task of restoration is so huge that outside help is needed. Entergy partners with other utilities in Mutual Assistance Agreements that lend a hand to each other if called in during widespread outage emergencies such as hurricanes or ice storms. In recent years, Entergy crews traveled as far as Kansas, Oklahoma and North Carolina to get the power back on.

In 2002, Hurricane Lili knocked out power to 243,000 customers in southern Louisiana and caused extensive damage in Entergy’s service area. A force of more than 14,000 line, vegetation workers and support personnel from 23 states and the District of Columbia moved into position to help Entergy crews quickly restore power.

Mutual Assistance companies meet annually to strengthen their partnership. Entergy participates in four different mutual assistance organizations.

Plan for the Worst, Hope for the Best

Two national weather vendors are under contract with Entergy to provide continuous weather monitoring throughout the year. In addition, Entergy utilizes a number of services on the Internet, as well as some localized weather services to strengthen its weather tracking capability.

When a storm becomes a likely threat to the Entergy service territory, the System Command Center in Jackson, Mississippi, is activated. Command Center personnel track the storm, coordinate preparation efforts, and proactively begin recruiting outside restoration help. One of the first steps taken is to notify the public of the approaching storm and offer a list of precautions customers can take before and after it strikes.

Local crews in the strike area are on alert. If it is necessary to bring in crews from the outside, they will be “staged” or housed in hotels and motels outside the impact area, ready to move in and begin restoration when they get the signal to begin.

Damage assessment – finding out how hard the system was hit – must be carried out quickly and accurately when the storm is gone, and Entergy acts aggressively to get it done. Damage assessment scouts are prepared in advance, and immediately after impact are dispatched to begin the assessment. Backbone feeders, those with major trunklines that support large electrical loads to customers, get particular attention and must be restored to service as soon as possible. This initial assessment helps develop an estimate of crews required, resources needed and the time estimated to complete restoration.

Following this, scouts are assigned to work directly with storm teams in the field to help provide the detailed assessment and support needed to facilitate the restoration.

The Restoration Process

In general, restoration of electrical service to customers proceeds in this fashion:

• Large transmission lines receive top priority. Without power available from power plants, all other restoration efforts are useless.

• Substations must be functioning in order for power to reach local distribution lines.

• The backbone feeders, carrying the power from the substation to the customers, are next in priority.

• Emergency services, life support facilities and communications networks (police, hospital, fire stations, media, industry) are restored next.

• Lines serving large blocks of customers are restored next.

• Lines serving neighborhoods follow because multiple customers are involved.

• Individual services are restored last because fewer customers are involved, and, in the case of scattered outages, it often takes more time to get power back on for them.