New Orleans advocates urge approval of 'virtual power plant' over Entergy resilience proposal

Beating drums and ringing bells, dozens of advocates and religious leaders gathered on the steps of New Orleans City Hall Thursday to urge local officials and Entergy to quickly move forward on a "virtual power plant" plan for backup clean energy during outages and hurricanes.

Six months after the City Council greenlit the idea, community groups want an official plan approved and funded, citing the looming 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina as a reminder of the need to take action. 

Together New Orleans and the Alliance for Affordable Energy say the plan is crucial to equip the city for disasters and outages, while also lowering electricity costs and providing more clean energy. The nonprofits criticized Entergy New Orleans for not installing “microgrids” around the city that can power facilities when the traditional grid fails, while the advocacy groups have built out a network.

“We are here today to create a sense of urgency for our city council and our utility system to act to better protect the citizens of this city during the growing dangers of outages,” said Shawn Anglim, a pastor and leader with Together New Orleans. 

Entergy, meanwhile, stresses that it is committed to resiliency. The company is proposing a utility-run plan that would expand grid resiliency using the same technology on a longer timeframe and using fewer funds than the nonprofit groups are requesting.

Nyka Scott, vice president of customer service and economic development at Entergy New Orleans, said the plan would be an additional “cog in the wheel” of related initiatives, such as smart thermostats, solar and traditional grid hardening.

"It really does fit nicely with all the other things we’re doing to make our system more resilient to these more frequent and stronger storms,” Scott said. “We’ve been saying our goal is to get power back on as quickly and fast as possible and safely as possible, and you know the way we do that honestly is to put bigger, stronger poles in.”

'Our lights stay on'

In October, the council launched the process to bring the virtual power plants to the city, earmarking $32 million in Entergy settlement funds to potentially finance the project.

“It’s kind of a new way, obviously, of doing things and an out-of-the-box way of doing things, but it is something that is happening in other parts of the country, and why not do it here?” council member-at-large Helena Moreno, who chairs the City Council's climate and sustainability committee, said in an interview later. “I think it makes all the sense in the world.”

Moreno, who is running for mayor this fall, said she wants to push the plan forward as quickly as possible.

“I definitely want to get it done before my term is over,” Moreno said.

The efforts of Together New Orleans emerged in the aftermath of Hurricane Ida and the deadly outages following the 2021 storm. Since then, the organization has built over a dozen solar and battery-powered microgrids, a network of “community lighthouses” of churches, community centers and shelters. Another organization, Feed the Second Line, built similar hubs at a handful of restaurants, an effort that Entergy helped support. 

During Hurricane Francine last year, all of the finished lighthouses stayed up and running during blackouts – a successful test run for more damaging weather events in the future, advocates noted during the presser.

“My church now has 408 solar panels on it, connected to an 8,000-pound battery,” said Antoine Barriere, a pastor at Household of Faith Family Worship. “When the grid fails, our lights stay on. We have charging stations, cooling, refrigeration, communication. We stay online and ready to serve.”

Differences between advocate, utility proposals

The proposals by the advocacy groups and Entergy before the City Council are more ambitious than the lighthouse program, sounding almost sci-fi. Alternatively called virtual power plants or distributed energy resources, the technology aggregates the solar-tied battery systems to ease strain on the grid during peak demand and serve as backup clean energy during outages.

The advocacy groups want to supply batteries for up to 1,500 solar-equipped homes and over 100 facilities – such as shelters and hospitals – over a three-year period using $32 million of Entergy settlement funds.

Estimates have determined these funds could leverage an additional $48 million in private capital and federal dollars, Broderick Bagert, an organizer for Together New Orleans said. 

Entergy, meanwhile, is proposing around $10 million of the settlement money over a five-year period to fund its virtual power plant proposal.

“$32 million is a lot of money,” Scott said. “When we settled the … case, that money was specifically dedicated to customer reimbursements that will benefit all customers, not just a small set of customers who may be able to access solar panels and battery backup.”

Both proposals, however, do seek to address accessibility with incentives for low and middle-income households that participate. The advocacy groups are proposing an upfront incentive rate that would have a cap of $10,000 for most residential properties and $300,000 for commercial or institutional systems, and an additional incentive for low-income residents.

Entergy is proposing lower incentive rates that would encourage battery installation for the 10,000 customers participating in the utility’s net meter solar program. A low or middle-income resident installing a battery in their home might receive a $5,400 incentive under the Entergy program, according to the utility's proposal, compared to the $12,000 cap under the advocates' proposal.