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Insights > Operation Gridiron: Building a stronger grid for New Orleans
Operation Gridiron: Building a stronger grid for New Orleans
10/13/2023
Entergy New Orleans works daily to provide safe, affordable, and reliable energy to our customers and our region. Through our new initiative, “Operation Gridiron,” we have developed the most comprehensive energy grid upgrade plan in the city’s history, to make the grid stronger and to invest in our community for the long-term.
In April of this year, our team filed a request with the New Orleans City Council for approval of Phase 1 of our Entergy Future Ready Resilience Plan.
If approved, the upgrades over the next decade will give New Orleans one of the most storm-ready power infrastructures in the country by:
- Investing $1 billion in our grid over 10 years in two, 5-year phases.
- Cutting outage times by more than half and saving customers millions of dollars.
- Upgrading thousands of poles to withstand 150 mph winds.
- Undergrounding wires where feasible.
- Hardening 650 miles of power lines.
- Performing responsible work in a transparent way that enables the community to hold us accountable.
We regularly make significant investments to meet the needs of a growing New Orleans, but we recognize the need to accelerate our grid-hardening efforts in a time when more frequent, more severe storms are impacting the Gulf Coast.
Through Operation Gridiron, our goal is to keep your lights on longer when a storm threatens and restore service sooner when it is interrupted - which means fewer and shorter disruptions, less need for evacuation, and significant overall savings for our customers and our community.
Soon, there will be Operation Gridiron signs all over the city, marking where the work will be done. Entergy New Orleans teams will host town halls and join neighborhood association meetings to share the specifics of each project.
All customers are welcome to join our team members at these meetings, ask questions and share your thoughts about what you want to see in your neighborhood.
Operation Gridiron builds upon Entergy New Orleans’ previous investments in the grid including: the New Orleans Power Station, which provides 128 megawatts of local generation; the 20-megawatt New Orleans Solar Station; critical upgrades to the Derbigny and Avenue C substations; and the underground transformer replacement project in the Central Business District and French Quarter.
To learn more about Entergy New Orleans’ planned projects in your neighborhood, click on the maps below for each district.
District A
District B
- Uptown, Garden District, Lower Garden District, Central City and Freret
- Mid-City, Gert Town, Downtown, Tremé, Central City and Hoffman Triangle
District C
- Behrman, Old Aurora, Tall Timbers-Brechtel, and English Turn
- Cut-Off
- Tremé, Iberville, Marigny, Bywater, Algiers Point and Old Aurora
District D
- Bernard, Fair Grounds, Dillard, Pontchartrain Park, Pines Village and St. John
- Holly Grove, Fontainebleau, Uptown Mid-City and Gentilly
District E
- Bayou Sauvage, Michoud and Lake Catherine
- Seabrook, Pines Village, Plum Orchard, Lake Forest and Michoud
- Lower Ninth Ward and Holy Cross
If you don’t see a project highlighted in your area, that area has either already been hardened, or upgrades would not be cost-efficient for New Orleans customers. Additionally, all customers in a given area benefit when power restoration resources have fewer outages to address. Note these planned projects are pending Council approval and are subject to change.
