Entergy New Orleans says aging equipment cause for recent power outages

Thank you for being here. I'm Diana Rodriguez, President Ceo of Energy, New Orleans. And we're here today to talk to you about three things, how important it is to invest in infrastructure and harden our grid. What we are doing to make our system more reliable and then Stephen Vineyard is going to talk about our third thing. He's going to share more information, more technical information and recent outages and explain to you how different they were and how important it is that you understand what we're doing to improve our system since the grid was designed about 70 years ago, we've seen tremendous change across the board. We've seen tremendous change in consumption. We've seen tremendous change in the types of storms. We're seen radically different storms and it has had *** cumulative effect on our system. So the fact that we have an aging grid and that it was designed over 70 years ago, we have seen 130% increase in lightning strikes just this year affecting that aging infrastructure with incidents like last night, what we've seen is perhaps it's not raining right now. But if there was *** storm, even *** few days ago, you will have seen an impact on infrastructure that has to be addressed and we are, we are planning to do so. So our crews are working constantly to do this and with the in, in um investment we've made so far, our reliability has improved by 27% between 2019 and 2023. I know that any outage to anyone is never *** good thing. So it is. And if you're one of the few people or any person who's had to experience an outage, especially in this heat, it makes it more difficult. But rest assured this is, we live here too. We are working through all of this. We continue to invest in what we need is important to every customer that we have and we, we're always working to do better. And with that, I'm gonna have Steven talk to you *** little bit about the technical aspects of the outages that have occurred recently, even though they've all been different. We, we would like to explain to you what has actually occurred. Thank you, Diana and thank you for coming to share some time with us today. Um In order to protect our customers, we do install devices on our system called lightning arrester. In New Orleans. We have over 30,000 lightning arrests on our system and our substations right behind us. You can see some of our substation arrest. The recent outages we had yesterday were our substation, uh, arrester activating, once activated, you'll see that uh, some may totally have *** AAA bigger failure. Some, you may not even know most of the time when these things do fail, you may see *** blink, you may see nothing and the system goes on protects itself and customers are saved from *** larger, more catastrophic outage because these arrests, um, not only protect against lightning but they protect against surges. So the whole goal of these sys of these systems are to ensure that we have shorter direct outages as well as less catastrophic, less costly outages. So *** lightning arrester may cost *** few $1000 when the damages they save our system from could be millions of dollars. So I can pause here and take *** few questions if you like about arrests and how they affect the systems and I'll give you *** little more information, more technical information if you like. Um So these are rests. Um How exactly are they stalled? I mean, I go into these, so how arrester installed it's installed on the, on the power line on there. And then when we have *** power, we call them three phases. Each is *** B and C phase. So each power line that goes on *** specific feeder or trunk that goes into the neighborhoods have three phases in the substation where they come off. These are where the specific station arrests are that by, are installed and they're installed between that power line phase to the ground. So what it does is it takes that arrest that surge from either lightning or surge on the line, some sort of fault on the line and it takes that surge that pass through the lightning arrester, it stops that surge or if it's in the surge, that's such *** big surge or *** large surge, it actually um, break apart and active when it activates so that it disconnects that uh, electrical surge and, and arrests it and takes it to the ground where instead of going to other systems instead of going into your home, um, it causes it, it stops that damage from cascading throughout the system. Once they are, once they're damaged, usually they're disconnect disconnected to disconnect themselves. We, uh, remove load from that substation for these particular type of arrests. And then we have AAA person go in and take the, the tap off the power line, the main line, but also the, also the tap between the ground to our system neutral. Uh, uh, quick question. So, uh, you said 30,000 arrest in Orleans Parish? Is there an idea of how many of those need to be replaced? And what, uh what clip you guys are replacing them at and have *** great question. So I said 30,000 arrests across our system on the lines of the Substations in Orleans Parish. Um As far as the ones we replaced, we replaced 24 so far these specific station arrests that we identified were that are coming to *** time where they need to be replaced. Um And what's the other part of your question? What's the rate at which you guys are able to replace? Um, so there's two things, but there's 707 111 and then of those types of rest, so of the rest identified, we only have *** few 100 that need to be replaced. That are this specific type, this specific vintage. We actually have another, um, type that we identified as having that are starting to fail now or starting to activate now. And um, we're, as soon as we're done with that inspection, I'm assuming maybe another 50 or so we'd have to go out and replace as well. So the 700 are the substation and the other type of, we're all as far as the ones that we're going after specifically right now are substation arrest. And then my question is it fair to say these are just because the term, the terminology isn't really that, you know, is it fair to compare these to surge protectors? That's *** great comparison. They're like serve protectors for our electrical infrastructure. That's correct. *** lot of training. Yeah, looking at them every day in order to understand which ones we need replacing we for these, we, we, we track trends so we take down the ones that have failed um, when they were manufactured what manufacturer, what vintage and those are the ones that we're actually going on inspecting monthly and identifying and keeping *** running list of the ones that we need to replace on the system, the issue. Do you know what caused it? That's *** great question. What activates these are, for example, they get beat up all the time with our weather. Last week, we had *** huge thunderstorm come through road through our system. So they took *** lot of hits to the lightning arrest. But also if you have *** tree branch that causes *** fault on the line, if you have someone hit *** pole, if you have any kind of fault on the line, the lightning arrester sees that surge of energy and that and dependent on the tolerance, that's when they activate. Once again. I, in fact, I know there's *** few different things that can happen. Do we know last night there had to be *** fault that occurred that the lightning arrester saw at those two different stations and they activated? But when these cases, since they've been on the system so long and that the particular manufacturer, um vintage, they, when they um activated, they activated in *** way where our system relay system where our protective system, like the breaker saw that and it opened up because how, how they failed, what did happen? You guys, what does investing and resilience? It's more of *** comprehensive look. So what we're doing is keeping the lights on every day. And, and I think Stephen mentioned that what happened last night is that the the product while it failed worked. And so it caused *** shorter outage that went would have occurred. Part of what we've suggested in resilience is there are 91 projects around the entire city that will make it smarter. So some of it may be using artificial intelligence, some of it will be smaller numbers of people affected so that you are not touching 10,000 people, but something like that would have affected *** few 100 people. So that's what *** resilient, more resilient grid would do. And I have to ask you um last night, the area where these I just have, you have one lot of paragraphs. One to me, one to t seem very sporadic where people are asking like is *** rolling blackout going on? Can you address that definitely not *** rolling blackout going on? These have to actually be pre identified. Arrests were going to change out. But due to the heat, we have to wait in order to ship load off of those substations to proactively go and replace those arrests to *** newer style which we actually have here on display. We have *** lot of people that we've been working on Super Bowl for years years up to um the Super Bowl day. Uh We've replaced all the rest breakers and different systems that affect the Superdome specifically and all the key areas tied to the Super Bowl. Um So we're ready to go. We have no, we have 700 in our stations, our Substations and we've identified 138 that need to replace. That's correct. Yeah. Remember these are like the sacrificial things we have on our system to protect for larger catastrophic damages. I think uh Steven's ready to show you some of the show and tell here. So I, I'll turn it over to you and make sure you, you use your gloves. Thank you. All right. So, and thank you everyone. All right. So as far as last night, here's, uh, the light lightning, one of the lightning arrests that did, uh, activate as you can see *** lot cheaper item to, uh, activate instead of damaging something, *** multimillion dollar piece of equipment. That's what it's for. That's if you have *** shorter duration outage, we go check the line, make sure everything's working, then turn it back on. Once we find this, we replace it with the newer version. Here's the more modern version of *** lightning arrester. As you can see, it has *** lot more, um, weather resistance to it. Polymer arrest there, *** lot of different styles. But this, these are what we're putting up to date once we have to go and replace *** lightning arrester in our station equipment that you see across, across the country. Light and arrests are used to protect against surges on all utility systems. So it's very common. We have them on our transformers. We have in our substations, we have it on *** lot of our equipment to be that sacrificial piece of equipment to stop, you know, larger damages. As I mentioned, this is just more new age, this is after years of research, the manufacturers have put more ripples to effectively be more weather resistant and things like that. So new technology, uh that one, I don't have the date on it, but they could be up, you know, they, they typically uh last *** lifetime as long as they don't have, you know, *** lot of damage when it comes to faults and surges and how much of *** difference these are gonna make and the new, the newer models are, are learned from all the mistakes of the past new technologies, how to seal these things. So the manufacturer is getting better and better. So these, these type of surgery directors can take *** lot more of *** beating from the elements. Each arrest is *** few $1000 one more anybody. Thank you all very much. Thank you. Thank you, Mr Will. Am I good.