How We Respond to an Outage after a Storm
Entergy's Power Restoration Procedure.
How Entergy Restores Power After Severe Weather.
First When the storm passes, Entergy personnel must assess damage to electric equipment and facilities to determine corrective actions.
Second Power plants, the primary source of power production, are restored.
Third Large transmission lines are repaired and restored, delivering power to cities, towns and major industrial facilities.
Fourth Substations are brought online and power is restored to emergency services, life support facilities, police and communications networks.
Fifth Power is restored to areas with the largest number of customers including businesses and neighborhoods.
Bucket trucks are safe to use when winds fall below 30
Sixth Individual services, often the most time consuming repairs, are restored last.
Click Here to find out what
equipment the customer is responsible for
and what equipment is
Damage assessment – finding out how hard the system
was hit – must be carried out quickly and accurately when the
storm is gone, and Entergy acts aggressively to get it done.
Damage assessment scouts are prepared in advance, and they are
dispatched immediately after impact to begin the assessment.
Backbone feeders, those with major trunk lines that support
large electrical loads to customers, get particular attention
and must be restored to service as soon as possible. This
initial assessment helps develop an estimate of crews required,
resources needed and the time estimated to complete restoration.
Following this, scouts are assigned to work directly with storm
teams in the field to help provide the detailed assessment and
support needed for the restoration.
The Restoration Process
In general, restoration of electrical service to customers proceeds in this fashion*:
- Large transmission lines receive top priority. Without power available from power plants, all other restoration efforts are useless.
- Substations must be functioning in order for power to reach local distribution lines.
- The backbone feeders, carrying the power from the substation to the customers, are next in priority.
- Emergency services, life support facilities and communications networks (police, hospital, fire stations, media, industry) are restored next.
- Lines serving large blocks of customers are restored next.
- Lines serving neighborhoods follow because multiple customers are involved.
- Individual services are then restored because fewer customers are involved, and, in the case of scattered outages, it often takes more time to get power back on.
Click here to find out what
equipment the customer is responsible for and what equipment is
* Bucket trucks are safe to use when
winds fall below 30 miles per hour.