Entergy New Orleans' Derbigny substation near the Superdome after a bird-related power outage on Monday, July 19, 2021. Birds caused outages at the substation in July 2021 and March 2022. (Staff photo by David Grunfeld, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune | The New Orleans Advocate)
Entergy trucks are seen at the power substation on Julia Street in New Orleans on Wednesday, March 9, 2022. (Photo by Max Becherer, NOLA.com and The Times-Picayune)
A lineman is seen working on a power pole along Lafayette Street near the power substation on Julia Street on Wednesday, March 9, 2022, in New Orleans. (Staff Photo by Max Becherer)
Entergy trucks are seen at the power substation on Julia Street amid power outages in the CBD and Mid-City. (Staff photo by Max Becherer)
Entergy New Orleans' Derbigny substation near the Superdome after a bird-related power outage on Monday, July 19, 2021. Birds caused outages at the substation in July 2021 and March 2022. (Staff photo by David Grunfeld, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune | The New Orleans Advocate)
Entergy trucks are seen at the power substation on Julia Street in New Orleans on Wednesday, March 9, 2022. (Photo by Max Becherer, NOLA.com and The Times-Picayune)
At 9:05 a.m. on March 9, downtown office workers were sipping their coffee and a bird was perched on a steel support at an Entergy New Orleans substation. Then the bird flapped its wings.
That flap electrocuted the bird, plunged nearly 10,000 energy customers into darkness and set off a 31-hour, 1,000-step process to restore power, utility officials said Tuesday as they promised better protections against animal-related outages.
Skeptical New Orleans City Council members said the utility should have been on notice because of a similar a bird-related outage last year, and questioned why Entergy hasn’t moved faster to install defenses like a laser light show.
“This is probably one of the most important substations that we have, as far as keeping the core of our city running,” said Council President Helena Moreno. “I would strongly urge you all to work as quickly as possible to make the necessary upgrades.”
At the same utility committee meeting, members endorsed an proposed ordinance to block utility companies from donating to council campaigns, in a move intended to restore public confidence after the 2018 scandal where Entergy paid actors to voice support for a controversial power plant.
Entergy officials sat in the hot seat for much of Tuesday’s hearing in council chambers. The City Council is the utility's regulator.
“Although it does sound absurd, animal interferences in utility infrastructure cause significant risk in our entire industry,” said Courtney Nicholson, the vice president of regulatory and public affairs for Entergy New Orleans. “We can, we will, we must do better.”
On both July 19 last year and March 9 this year, wayward birds managed to disrupt power distribution at the substation on Julia Street near the Pontchartrain Expressway and the Caesars Superdome.
In the first outage, 6,700 customers lost power for up to 55 hours. More recently, 9,890 customers lost power for up to 31 hours before power was restored to all of them. The customers included large employers like Tulane University’s medical school and research labs.
Michelle Bourg, Entergy’s vice president for transmission asset management, said the company conducted a “forensic” examination of the March 9 outage. Investigators concluded that the bird, whose species wasn’t identified, was sitting on a grounded steel support when it extended its wings around a protective “waffle disk” to an electrified switch, sending electricity surging through its body.
A lineman is seen working on a power pole along Lafayette Street near the power substation on Julia Street on Wednesday, March 9, 2022, in New Orleans. (Staff Photo by Max Becherer)
Video cameras at the substation caught the flash of an electrical arc. The sheer force of the electrical surge punched holes through a tubular aluminum bus and caused widespread damage at the substation.
Entergy was able to restore power to 97% of customers within two hours by using other switches, the company said. But restoring the Derbigny substation required more than a day of hands-on labor, which had to be painstakingly planned and double-checked to ensure none of the company’s workers were electrocuted in the process.
Almost as soon as one animal-related outage ended, another one began. On March 11, a squirrel knocked out power for 3,771 customers in Lakeview for 25 minutes.
Bourg and other officials said that animal-related outages are a challenge for all electrical utilities. But council members on Tuesday questioned the frequency with which they occur in New Orleans.
“I’m kind of struggling, because birds extending their wings is a pretty foreseeable occurrence,” said Council Vice President JP Morrell.
From 2018 to 2019, Entergy installed a high-grade fence to protect the Derbigny substation from animal and human intrusion. Yet under questioning from Moreno, Entergy officials admitted that no more animal countermeasures were installed after the July 2021 outage.
Since the outage earlier this month, Entergy has installed what Bourg called a “very low tech” anti-bird sound system at the Derbigny substation, which is designed to ward birds off with noises.
A more ambitious plan the utility floated in 2021 for a ”laser bird deterrent system” has yet to arrive downtown. That pricey system is designed to spook birds away by flashing lasers.
The utility says it is in the process of designing a trial laser system at the Tricou substation in the Lower 9th Ward, but there are no firm plans for the Derbigny substation.
Entergy trucks are seen at the power substation on Julia Street amid power outages in the CBD and Mid-City. (Staff photo by Max Becherer)
Bourg said that regardless of what defenses are installed, there is no “silver bullet” and all come with price tags that must be weighed against their benefits. The utility is also building another feeder into the downtown area, which could help it more quickly restore power after another outage.
Moreno said it was critical for Entergy to provide reliable power to major institutions like Tulane University, which said it was exploring options for more backup power after the outage earlier this month.
“If we want to build up the whole biosciences industry and medical industry, we have to make sure we have the power to back it,” Moreno said.
Separately Tuesday, committee members voted unanimously to approve an ordinance sponsored by Moreno that would ban contributions to council members or council candidates from all utilities regulated by the City Council, or entities with City Council or Sewerage and Water Board contracts. Entergy New Orleans officials left before the vote on the proposed ordinance, which was referred to the full council.
That ordinance is backed by the Alliance for Affordable Energy and the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice, which call it a necessary response to the paid actor scandal of 2018.
“There are many citizens of New Orleans that are in fear, and they have good reason to be in fear, because they have seen the diabolical behavior of entities like Entergy New Orleans,” said a supporter of the ordinance, Rev. Gregory Manning of the Broadmoor Community Church. “Poor citizens of New Orleans were exploited and used in order that they might give false testimony.”
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