Entergy replaces wooden transmission poles in Mississippi
On Tuesday, Entergy Mississippi announced it had replaced more than 1,000 wooden transmission poles with steel or concrete ones, part of a project launched last year to replace all of them.
The replacement efforts are part of a $28 million annual investment the company said it is making to harden its grid and enhance reliability.
“Our customers and communities depend on us to deliver reliable service,” said Shawn Corkran, vice president of reliability, Entergy Mississippi. “We study and invest in modernizing and strengthening our grid to ensure our customers have the power they need when they need it. This involves not just replacing aging infrastructure, but also updating our equipment with materials that improve our resiliency.”
Maintaining the poles is a crucial part of the company’s transmission system, officials said. More than 461,000 customers rely on Entergy Mississippi’s ability to send electricity across transmission lines and into their homes, the company said. High-voltage lines and structures need maintenance, and while wooden poles were once the standard for transmission structures, today’s steel and concrete poles are preferred due to their reliability.
“We identified wooden transmission structures in need of replacement across the state,” Corkran said. “With these upgraded structures, we can provide a more hardened, reliable system for our customers and reduce the length of outages caused by transmission wood pole failures.”
The company said it brought on additional crews to replace the wooden poles. Those additional crew members will also be available to help restore damaged transmission lines in the event of an unplanned outage or an outage due to a storm, the company said.
