On Wednesday, September 16th, RNO attended an Entergy town hall in Algiers – where about a half dozen Entergy employees spoke to local residents about their electricity services. There were four key takeaways from the event:
- Residents want to know why blackouts occur, and how Entergy communicates with customers during these times.
- The community wanted to know where and how Phase One of Entergy’s grid hardening and resiliency plan investments (down to the street level) impacted their neighborhoods.
- People asked when Entergy plans to continue their resiliency plan, to protect them from further outages – because blackouts create financial and other hardships.
- Investing in hardening the grid before a storm, costs less than performing emergency repairs after severe weather. Let’s pass those savings onto utility customers.
More than one of the community members expressed concerns about how blackouts had affected their lives. This includes lost food and issues with their job. It’s also clear that residents want Entergy to continue their resiliency program, to make the community more able to withstand severe weather.
Of course, resiliency costs money, it’s an investment, and residents asked when Entergy was going to make those investments in their neighborhood.
The biggest takeaway for me: protecting our communities while saving money over the long-term is the priority. The City Council should work with Entergy to begin Phase Two of the resilience plan. Then, we can rest easier that our grid will be more resilient, there will be fewer outages, and we can save money in the long-term. Upgrading the system when we have blue skies is a no-brainer as opposed to waiting for the costly emergency repairs after a storm (and another outage).