Entergy New Orleans resolves $252M in settlements with City Council
Through three separate settlements with the New Orleans City Council, Entergy New Orleans recently agreed in principle to a total of $252 million to benefit customers in the area.
“We are pleased to resolve these open issues after constructive conversations with the New Orleans City Council,” Deanna Rodriguez, president and CEO for Entergy New Orleans, said. “We appreciate the collaborative effort of all stakeholders in getting to this point, and we look forward to the committee vote next week and to begin flowing the settlement benefits to our customers.”
These arrangements included $116 million from a settlement with System Energy Resources, Inc. (SERI), $138 million from a tax matter and $500,000 from a reliability matter. For SERI, this came in the form of a refund and a reduction in the future costs charged by SERI to Entergy New Orleans for power from the Grand Gulf Nuclear Station, ending years of litigation. Some of that settlement has already made it to Entergy, but the remainder will be refunded after approval by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC).
Lower rates provided for by the SERI settlement will become effective in June. The tax matter was an IRS tax audit, and that $138 million will be paid over time.
“I am pleased that we are able to put the SERI litigation behind us,” Rod West, Entergy group utility president and president of SERI, said. “Some of these cases have been pending for close to a decade and resolving them lets us both provide meaningful refunds and lower rates to customers and stop the costly and time-consuming litigation at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.”
Under the terms of these settlements, Entergy New Orleans will also have to invest $500,000 into reliability upgrades for its system, owing to an old fine issued by the council over past reliability performance. Rodriguez noted that its system has improved significantly since then.
For customers, all of these settlements will be used to lower customer rates over 25 years.
