Is New Orleans’ Grid Ready for the Next Big One?
Resilience and Reliability Go Together Like Mondays and Red Beans
New Orleans has never needed convincing that hurricane season matters. But the most useful question is no longer simply whether the power will go out. It is whether limited infrastructure dollars are being directed at the failures most likely to disrupt daily life — and whether the systems supporting recovery will work together when the next storm arrives.
Entergy New Orleans’s Accelerated Resilience Plan offers a promising model of strategic capital spending: identify the grid structures most vulnerable to wind damage, then harden those assets first. This strategy makes sense.
It must also be noted that late last week, Entergy filed a reliability plan with the City Council. This is an important step to inform decision makers about the steps Entergy is making to keep the lights on. It’s also important to remember, resilience investments create reliability, and reliability relies on smart resilience.
Why Entergy’s grid-hardening plan is a sound investment
In October 2024, the New Orleans City Council approved the first phase of Entergy New Orleans’s Accelerated Resilience Plan for work during 2025 and 2026. Entergy’s current public description identifies 63 projects, nearly 3,100 strengthened structures, 63 miles of upgraded electric lines, and a $100 million investment through the end of 2026.
The important part is not only the size of the investment. Entergy says it used thousands of storm scenarios to identify vulnerable parts of the grid, then concentrated work where stronger poles and lines are expected to reduce damage and shorten restoration times. In several areas, standard poles are being replaced with taller, more fortified structures designed for higher wind speeds.
That is a strategic use of a capital budget. Wind damage is a physical-infrastructure problem, and the plan directs large, one-time expenditures toward assets most likely to fail. It is targeted hardening rather than a blanket replacement of the entire citywide system.
Entergy has also published project information by City Council district, allowing residents to see where work is planned. The company describes this two-year program as a first phase, not a finish line. That is the right framing: the plan is meaningful, but its value should ultimately be measured by whether hardened areas experience fewer failures and faster restoration.
Entergy Leads with Technology and Strategy
Entergy’s resilience plan isn’t just well-funded, it’s modeled. Before a single pole was replaced, Entergy ran thousands of storm scenarios against its own grid data to identify exactly which structures were statistically most likely to fail in a hurricane. The $100 million wasn’t spread evenly across the system; it was routed to the specific poles and lines the data flagged as highest risk. That’s a technology-led strategy: predictive modeling first, capital spending second, targeted at the failure points.
Resilience and Reliability Go Together
I understand why the City Council is asking for a reliability plan before making any commitments before asking New Orleanians to pay for Entergy’s resilience plan. It’s an understandable response by lawmakers. But, unless Entergy starts making large, strategic, and sustained resilience investments into the city’s electric grid, reliability is not going to improve in a meaningful way.
Look, our city is old, sinking, prone to severe weather and temperatures swings, and nearly all of our infrastructure is lacking from deferred maintenance. But we have two choices: either move forward with real investments into our infrastructure or look back at past failures. I think the answer is clear that we need to look to the future, and I hope the City Council holds Entergy accountable on resilience and reliability – because they go together like Mondays and red beans.
The 2026 Atlantic hurricane season runs through November 30. Residents can track Entergy outages at etrviewoutage.com and build a personalized emergency plan at ready.nola.gov.