Entergy New Orleans leadership discusses outages

I know that any outage to anyone is never a good thing so it is and if you're one of the 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 some this we live here too we are working through all of this we continue to invest in what we know is important to every customer that we have and we'll we're always working to do better and with that I'm going to have Steven talk to you a little bit about the technical aspects of the outages that have occurred recently even though they've all been different we would like to explain to you what has actually occurred thank you Deana 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 arresters in New Orleans we have over 30,000 lightning arresters on our system in our substations right behind us you can see some of our substation arresters the recent outages we had yesterday were our substation uh arresters activating once activated you'll see that uh some may totally have a a a bigger failure some you may not even know most of the time when these things do fail you may see a blink you may see nothing and the system goes on protects itself and customers are saved from a l larger more catastrophic out is because these arresters um not only protect against lightning but they protect against surges so the whole goal of these of these systems are to ensure that we have shorter duration outages as well as less catastrophic less costly outages so a lightning arrestor May cost a few thousand dollars when the damage you they save our system from could be millions of dollars so I can pause here and take a few questions if you like about arresters and how they affect the systems and I give you a little more information more technical information if you like G um so these arresters um how exactly are they installed I mean kind of go into detail about that so how are restor is installed it's installed on the on the power line on when we have a power we call them three phases each is a b and c phase so each power line that goes on a specific feeder or trunk that goes into the neighborhoods have three phases in the substation where they come off these are where these specific station arresters are that behind me are installed and they're installed between that power line phase to the ground so what it does is it takes that arrests that Surge from either lightning or surge on the line some sort of fault on the line and it takes that surge that passes through the lightning arrestor it stops that surge or if it's in the surge that's such a big surge or a 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 how do you sorry how do youall replace them once they are you know damaged like that once they're damaged usually they're disconnect disconnected to disconnect themselves we uh remove load from that substation for these particular type of arresters and then we have a a person go in and take to tap off the power line the main line but also to also to tap between the ground to our system neutral so uh quick question uh you said 30,000 arresters in Orleans Parish is there an idea of how many of those need to be replaced and what what clip you guys are replacing them at and have a great question so I said 30,000 arresters across our system on the lines of the substations that orans Parish in Orleans Parish um as far as the ones we replaced we replaced 24 so far these specific station arresters that we identified were that are coming to a time where they need to be replaced um and what's the other part of your question what's the what's the rate at which you guys are able to replace these um so there's two things but there's 700 right 711 and then of those kind types of arresters so of the arresters identifi we only have a few hundred that need to be replaced that are this specific type the spe 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 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 okay so those the 700 are both the substation arresters and the other types of arresters we're all as far as the ones that were going after specifically right now are substation arresters okay and then U my followup question is it fair to say these are just because the the term the terminology isn't really that you know known right is it fair to compare these to surge protectors that's a great comparison they're like surge protectors for our electrical infrastructure that's correct how are you all monitoring the damage I mean are we out and looking at them every day or how do we know which ones need replacing 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 out inspecting monthly and identifying and keeping a running list of the ones that we need to replace on the system yes you do we know what caused these uh um things to activate last night also kind of activate like branches or anything they can activate that's a great question what activates these are for example they get uh beat up all the time with our weather last week we had a huge thunderstorm come through roll through our system so they took a lot of of hits to the the lightning arresters but also if you have a a tree branch that causes a fault on the line if you have someone H to pole if you have any kind of fault on the line the lightning arrestor sees that surge of energy and that and dependent on the tolerance that's when they activate do we know what happened last night ex I know there's a few different things that can happen do we know what happened last night last night there had to be a fault that occurred that the lightning arresters saw at those two different stations and they activated but when these cases since they've been on the system so long and there the particular manufacturer um vintage they when they um activate they activate in a way where our system relay system where our protective system like the breaker saw that and it opened up because how how they failed guys are talking what does that like for you guys what does inves inen now it's more of a 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 an shorter outage that one would have occurred part of what we've suggested in resilience is there are 91 projects around the entire city 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're are not touching 10,000 people but something like that would affected a few hundred people so that's what a resilient more resilient grid is would do and I have to ask you um last night the areas where these outages happen you have one around the one in one in seemed very sporic asking like is a rolling blackout going on can you address that definitely not a rolling blackout going on these have actually be pre pre-identified arresters we're going to change out but due to the heat we have to wait in order to um shift load off of those substations to proactively go and replace those arresters to a newer style which we actually have here on display and I have to ask a different question um I know you you're changing some some old and faulty we have a huge event coming up Super Bowl a lot of people have concerns around the Super Bowl with power outages I mean how are you ensur that these this system is prepared to handle an event like that oh we've been working on Super Bowl for years years up to um the Super Bowl day uh We've replaced all the arresters breakers and different systems that affect the super doome specifically and all the key areas tied to the Super Bowl um so we're ready to go just want to make sure we have this right 30,000 arresters across New Orleans you've identified more than 700 that need to be replaced no we have 700 in our stations our substation and we've identified 138 that need to replace and so far You' reped around 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 Stephen's ready to show you some of the show and tell here so I I'll turn it over to you to make sure you you use your gloves thank you de all right so show and tell thank you everyone all right so as far as last here's the light lightning one of the lightning arresters that did uh activate as you can see a lot cheaper item to uh activate instead of damaging something a multi-million dollar piece of equipment that's what it's for that's you have a 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 version of a lightning arrestor as you can see it has a lot more um weather resistance to it polymer arresters a lot of different styles but this these are we putting up today once we have to go and replace a lightning restor in our station common you across the country across the country lightting arresters 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 our um a lot of our equipment to be that sacrificial piece of equipment to stop you know larger damages as I mentioned is this one in your hand um is this like a better quality one than the one we see up there where it's like kind of more spaced out this is just more new age this is after years and of research the manufacturers have put more ripples to effectively be more weather resistant and things like that so new technology so approximately how old is something like that uh that one I don't have the date on it but they could be up you know they they typically uh last a lifetime as long as they don't have you know a lot of damage when it comes to faults and surges and how how much of a difference is it going to make using the newer model compared to the older model 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 surge aror arresters can take a a lot more of a beating and I the elements 30,000 ACR the city 700 13 what does a price tag like to replace the that you already to rep each arrester is a $ few th000 one more anybody thank you all very much thank you thank you Mr Wiz everybody good yeah