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News Release > Power Being Restored, Meters Being Inspected
Power Being Restored, Meters Being Inspected
09/07/2017
Crews have energized three of the five mobile substations being used to bypass damaged substations and are expected to have the final two online by the end of today.
Once all mobile substations are operational, all affected customers who can safely receive power will be restored. Meanwhile, those customers whose locations cannot yet receive power because of flooding or storm damage are being notified of the process of how to go about having their electricity restored.
Neighborhood Inspections
“We actually have workers going door to door in flooded areas, looking at the homes and determining whether the meter was damaged and whether the location can safely receive power,” said Vernon Pierce, vice president of customer service for Entergy Texas, Inc. “As customers bring in temporary housing and make repairs to their homes, we have a process in place to make sure that Entergy will be there to provide power as soon as it is safe to do so.”
For areas that have flooded, Entergy is inspecting meters then repairing and replacing them as is necessary. Customers may need to make repairs to property and obtain inspections and/or permits before Entergy is able to safely restore power to these locations. For more information please visit www.entergy.com/harvey.
Underground electrical systems were also damaged by floodwaters, so crews will be working to repair those systems as well.
Customers are asked not to pile their debris near Entergy electrical equipment, such as meter bases, poles, guy wires and transformers.
Reporting New or Existing Outages
As power is restored, it is possible that customers will receive notifications that their power is on when it really is not. This is normal, as the system detected the larger outage to be addressed before recognizing the smaller one. If this happens, customers are asked to report the outage.
Rebuilding the System
As Entergy works to permanently repair the system over the coming weeks, customers may experience power interruptions that are more frequent and may be longer in duration than normal. Efforts will be made to notify customers in advance if it is possible to do so.
“We are close to restoring power to all customers who can take power, but work remains to be done to rebuild our system,” Pierce said. “Our system is in an abnormal and delicate condition, so we’ll have to spend the next few weeks rebuilding it, adding back in our contingencies and redundancies, and replacing temporary and damaged equipment with new, upgraded assets. And when customers with once flooded homes are able to safely take power again, we will be there to restore them one house at a time.”
Entergy Texas, Inc. provides electricity to more than 440,000 customers in 27 counties. It is a subsidiary of Entergy Corporation. Entergy Corporation is an integrated energy company engaged primarily in electric power production and retail distribution operations. Entergy owns and operates power plants with approximately 30,000 megawatts of electric generating capacity, including nearly 9,000 megawatts of nuclear power. Entergy delivers electricity to 2.9 million utility customers in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas. Entergy has annual revenues of approximately $10.8 billion and nearly 13,000 employees.
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Twitter: @EntergyTX
