Electric utility crews ready to roll as Hurricane Laura lashes Louisiana
Electric company crews from more than two dozen states poured into Louisiana and Texas Aug. 27 as Hurricane Laura marched north from the Gulf of Mexico, knocking out power for more than a quarter-million residents, many of whom remained hunkered down as heavy rain and fierce winds pummeled the state into the afternoon and evening hours.
Entergy, the primary electric utility in Louisiana, said at 11 a.m. CDT that around 360,000 customers in four states were in the dark after Laura came ashore in the wee hours of Thursday morning as a Category 4 storm packing winds of around 145 miles per hour and the likelihood of significant storm surge.
The Edison Electric Institute tallied around 735,000 customers offline at midday within all utility service territories. More than 20,000 workers from at least 27 states, D.C., and Canada were mobilized and ready to assist with the power restoration mission, EEI said. Electric companies in the path of the hurricane started to prepare last week by prepositioning crews, resources, and equipment to respond to any power outages.
The storm dealt a blow to the region’s power grid. A spokeswoman for the Midcontinent Independent System Operator, Inc. (MISO) told Daily Energy Insider that “Laura’s impact on the transmission grid has been significant.”
“Approximately 5 gigawatts (GW) of generation went offline in preparation for the storm, with another 3 GW lost due to storm damage,” said MISO’s Allison Bermudez. “Additionally, numerous high-voltage transmission lines were downed in the storm; the weakened grid has created some challenging operating conditions in western Louisiana and eastern Texas.”
Lake Charles was the largest metropolitan area in the immediate path of Laura and is the site of refineries and petrochemical plants as well as Entergy’s new Lake Charles Power Station, a 994-megawatt natural gas-fired, combined-cycle power plant. Damage was still being assessed in Lake Charles at midday and it was not known if the power plant and its associated high-voltage transmission lines had been damaged.
“We continue acquiring more resources to restore service, including adding more transmission restoration workers in anticipation of damage to our high-voltage systems,” Entergy said in a written update. “Our crews, contractors and mutual-assistance partners are prepared to work long hours after the storm passes, restoring service to customers as safely and as quickly as possible.”
Linemen and other personnel from as far away as Minnesota, New Mexico, and New Jersey were staging in the region and ready to spring into action as Laura moved through Louisiana and into Arkansas. Laura was losing steam and was downgraded to a tropical storm as it zeroed in on the Little Rock area, but still carried sustained winds up to 70 miles per hour as of noon CDT.
“Laura is expected to impact Entergy Arkansas customers with 40-50 mph winds and gusts up to 65 mph in the southernmost counties of the state,” Entergy said. “There will be heavy flooding, rainfall of 4-8 inches with locally higher amounts possible, and major flooding is expected. There is also the chance of isolated tornadoes.”
The operations center for MISO’s South Region territory is located in Little Rock where MISO has declared a Severe Weather Alert for the area through 11:30 p.m. CDT Thursday. “MISO has multiple redundancies built into the system and back-up operation facilities to ensure a smooth transfer of all operational MISO functions,” the organization said in a written statement.
Entergy had warned its customers in the path of Laura on Wednesday to be prepared for a possibly long wait before their lights and air conditioners clicked back on. Crews would not be sent into the field until the blustery winds had subsided, and that the restoration strategy would focus first on high-priority targets such as fire stations, hospitals, and nursing homes. Getting any damaged substations and associated lines back in operation were also given priority.
“As we learn more about the damage, we put a restoration plan in place that helps us restore the greatest number of customers safely in the shortest amount of time,” Entergy said. “We can’t use our bucket trucks until sustained winds are less than 30 mph, but we can still begin restoring service to customers by closing circuit breakers, rerouting power and other actions.”
On top of having to navigate flooded roads and downed trees, repair crews also will have to cope with social distancing and other now-familiar steps needed to avoid possible exposure to coronavirus. Entergy said the pandemic would require workers to adjust their travel practices and make greater use of drones for survey purposes.
Eli Viamontes, Entergy’s vice president of utility distribution operations, said. “This is going to be a marathon, not a sprint, so we are asking that our customers be patient with us and other first responders as we work to recover safely.”
