Should Entergy New Orleans Compensate Ratepayers for loss, damage, and or inconvenience due to prolonged outages?
On August 26th, at the Climate Change and Sustainability Committee of New Orleans’ City Council, grid resilience, customer communications, and accountability were at the heart of the council session led by Chair Aimee McCarron.
After Council unanimously passing resolutions to establish updated “Integrated Resource Plan Rules” (utility docket 26-01 ) and their respective procedural schedule for the year of 2027 (utility docket 26-02) , a lively exchange between council members, Entergy leadership, and ratepayers occurred.
Committee Chair and Councilwoman McCarron initiated the discussion by stating that “we [ City Council ] must figure out a way to credit people for these outages. Anyone who has been out of power for more than 4 hours, especially a business, for example Trader Joes in Council Member Harris’ District (B), (they don’t have a generator they were out of power for 6 hours) had to throw their food away ”. Council-member Aimee McCarron further asserted that “our residents deserve to be compensated when they are suffering these power outages especially in this heat for that long ”
Entergy New Orleans, for August 21 during severe thunderstorms, reported in a presentation to the Council that over 14,600 customers faced blackouts spanning Uptown New Orleans, Plum Orchard, St. Roch, and Algiers, with the longest outages lasting 28 hours.
A number of ratepayers gave testimony at the Sustainability Committee, and expressed multiple frustrations, given Entergy’s responses for the outages, ranging; compensation for spoiled goods, faulty grid infrastructure, poor data collection, dubious resilience scores, and erroneous disaster communications systems. Chief among these complaints were the digital communications mishaps made by Entergy’s automated emergency SMS messaging.
Several New Orleans utility customers who experienced blackouts during the August 21st thunderstorms, were erroneously assured their energy hadn’t been affected at all. Entergy New Orleans at the Climate Change and Sustainability Committee meeting claimed this error in their communications occurred due to a “glitch”. Sharonda Williams, Vice President of Regulator and Public Affairs, in the opening of Entergy’s presentation admitted : “We are aware that some of our customers may have received messages about the outages that may have been inaccurate or confusing”
Upon council members questioning Entergy leadership on their efforts to correct their erroneous communication systems, Deanna Rodriguez, Entergy New Orleans President and CEO answered; “First of all, I want to apologize for the errors in communication, that was not acceptable, but it was also not intentional”. She further explained without specifics, that “we found a glitch in the software that we are working with, we are working with our IT and as-well the manufacturer of this software to understand what happened ”
Regardless of these reassurances, customers still expressed their agitation.
Lidwina Hurst, a New Orleans resident, expressed vehemently, “I am signed up to receive text messages; I received none. After 3 telephone calls, the last at 3:15 in the morning, I was asked the same questions, and I was given the same information that there were no outages in the area. That was ten to eleven hours later.”
Hurst said she was able to override the automated response after multiple attempts, only to be told by a human operator the same inaccurate information.
“This is unacceptable for seniors, people who are on medical apparatuses, like oxygen, cath machines, those with medications that need refrigeration ”
Another elderly resident of New Orleans and Vietnam War veteran, David Wadley, shared his grievances and skepticism regarding Entergy’s efforts to correct the mishap that leadership attributed to “a glitch in the software”.
Wadley recounted, “I was maintaining mainframe computers back when they were first dropping them in Vietnam to do missile control and have been in IT ever since”
“I know this isn’t just a glitch. When your energy maps go out, they always go out. I’ve lived at the same address for 20 years and have never had a power failure show up on the map correctly. I’ve had to argue on the phone all night with repeated calls to Atlanta, who doesn’t even know where I live”. Wadley went further to say, “You guys are guilty of just looking at every glitch at a time… I don’t see you studying the series of glitches; I don’t see you questioning whether you’ve got any valid data to measure things on”.
Lizzy Pitts, a resident of Uptown, echoed McCarron’s calls for compensation for residents suffering blackouts.“When these people lose power the not only have to throw out food, but if you're on any refrigerated medication that goes above 8 degrees Celsius, then you also have to toss it out; and we all know how expensive our medication is”
McCarron’s assertion and suggestion to council isn’t unprecedented, as other progressive states have established ratepayer protections in the form of reimbursements upon prolonged energy outages.New York State Department of Public Service, for instance, in 2021 passed a law, Public Service Law 73, that requires utility providers to reimburse residential customers $25 for each 24-hour period past a 72hr outage threshold and compensate customers up to $540 for food and medicine spoilage upon application within 14 days of the event. In Michigan, the Michigan Public Service Commission, as of 2023, mandates that for every 24 hours of service interruption, the energy customer automatically is credited about $40 within 90 days of the outage. Homeowners and renters with insurance also have the ability to file claims for food loss.
Many New Orleans residents are hoping to hold Entergy New Orleans to the same standard as storms intensify and the energy grid is challenged further. Perhaps New Orleans can take inspiration for utility regulation from other states implementing protections for their constituents.
