Hurricane Ida's 150-mph winds crippled a Louisiana electric grid already vulnerable from aging transmission lines, electricity bottlenecks and $2 billion worth of damage caused by three hurricanes that hit last year.
Ida’s landfall on Sunday left a wake of destruction and suffering. More than 1 million customers were without electricity immediately after the storm - a hardship that, for some, could last weeks., the largest Louisiana utility, is facing tough questions on whether it had done enough to harden the electric system, which lost eight major transmission lines delivering power to the New Orleans metropolitan area.
Hurricane Laura in southwest Louisiana highlighted how Entergy operates a transmission network with two different design standards for resisting wind damage. Transmission lines and infrastructure built in recent years are rated to withstand 140-mph winds, and in some cases up to 150 mph gusts, according to Entergy disclosures with Louisiana utility regulators.
Three years after Entergy merged with Gulf States in 1994, the company implemented a more robust design for the transmission network that met or exceeded the National Electrical Safety Code standard. But the network still includes lines built to the older, lower standard because they complied with NESC codes at the time they were constructed.
Hurricane Laura, which hit the Lake Charles area in southwest Louisiana, mostly damaged Entergy’s weaker legacy infrastructure. Michelle Bourg, an Entergy vice president, said in testimony submitted to the Louisiana Public Service Commission in April that legacy systems were damaged or destroyed by that storm while more modern work was "largely unaffected" by Laura.Some customers affected by Ida could be without power for a similar period or longer, particularly in outlying areas.
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