On the heels of Entergy Corp.’s decision to place its New Orleans subsidiary in bankruptcy last week on the day that Hurricane Rita barreled into the Gulf Coast at the Texas-Louisiana border, the utility is now dealing with serious damage to its power infrastructure that is threatening to stall the recovery effort in East Texas from the storm.
On Monday, Entergy’s Texas subsidiary commenced rolling blackouts in the area of far north Houston that it services, including The Woodlands. The move was made to reduce stress on the utility’s damaged electrical system after Hurricane Rita and related tornadoes downed power lines and disabled most of the utility’s power plants. A total of almost 1.25 million accounts were without power as of Monday in East Texas and Western Louisiana.

One of the biggest problems facing Entergy is the damage to the company’s huge Roy S. Nelson power plant near Lake Charles, which suffered substantial damage during the hurricane. That plant generates power for a large part of Entergy’s service area in East Texas and Western Louisiana, and the high voltage power lines that carry the power throughout the region were so badly damaged in the storm that Entergy is having problems getting electricity to some parts of its Texas service area. Entergy announced that it was about 30% short of the power it needs to meet the local needs of a four county area that it serves in the far north and east areas of Houston because only three of the 13 power plants that the utility normally relies upon were in a position to furnish power yesterday. As a result, the company initiated the rolling blackouts on a day in which temperatures in the area were around 100 degrees, and those blackouts will continue indefinitely.
Outages in the areas serviced by Entergy are more severe than in Houston. Inasmuch as Entergy draws its power from the giant electric network known as Eastern Interconnection, its power base had been hit hard by both Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. In contrast, Houston draws its power from companies within the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (“Ercot”), which escaped from Rita relatively unscathed. Texas has maintained its transmission system and power plants as a separate grid in order to keep that system under state control, whereas the system from which Entergy draws power is an interstate system that is regulated by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
As of Monday, Entergy reported over 650,000 metered accounts in Louisiana and Texas that were without power as a result of damage from the two recent storms.