Entergy Texas discusses their plan to strengthen the local power grid

THE WOODLANDS, TX – Over the past few years, it has become increasingly more obvious that the Texas power grids are in some state of needing repair, maintenance, update, or replacement. In particular, the Snowpocalypse of 2021 and Hurricanes Ike, Harvey, and Beryl brought to the forefront how relatively tenuous our power supply is in times of natural disaster.

Add to this the burgeoning population growth in The Woodlands area and Montgomery County in general, and it’s little wonder that the local grid is strained to the breaking point. Unfortunately, both summer heat and winter cold have proved fatal in the absence of ordinarily everyday electricity. Particularly after Beryl, voices of dissent were raised in the aftermath of power restoration issues, especially when it came to CenterPoint Energy.

Entergy Texas, however, who provides electricity to a vast majority of The Woodlands Township, appeared to be more active and proactive, and many people’s power outages were counted by hours and not days like elsewhere. The company knows that extreme events such as the ones listed above, coupled with an increased dependence on electricity to power homes, businesses, and essential services, underscore the need for an even more resilient electrical grid.

To better protect the Southeast Texas power grid – which we are a part of – from extreme weather and improve service reliability, Entergy Texas recently filed an application with the Public Utility Commission of Texas for approval of Phase I of its comprehensive Texas Future Ready Resiliency Plan. The plan benefits communities by minimizing outages, reducing restoration costs and improving recovery times for extreme weather events while keeping rates affordable

Once approved, the investments included in Phase I are expected to benefit customers by decreasing future storm restoration costs by approximately $129 million and reducing the duration of power outages following significant weather events by 4.5 billion minutes over the next fifty years.

“The increasing frequency and cost of storm restoration, the increasing impact from prolonged outages, and recently passed state legislation demonstrate that now is the optimal time to pursue key grid hardening investments,” said Eliecer Viamontes, president and CEO of Entergy Texas. “While Entergy Texas has historically invested in the reliability and resiliency of its generation, transmission, and distribution systems, significant and emerging circumstances support the need to accelerate the pace of these investments. Our comprehensive Resiliency Plan creates stronger communities while managing customer bill impacts.”

Phase I of the company’s Resiliency Plan is a multiyear proposal that includes six key measures to prevent, withstand, and recover from damage imposed by significant storm events:

• Rebuilding main feeder lines to a storm-resilient overhead design standard.
• Rebuilding neighborhood distribution lines to a storm-resilient overhead design.
• Replacing poles with higher wind-rated structures and equipment on high-voltage lines.
• Undergrounding select overhead neighborhood lines.
• Hardening substations by upgrading roofs to meet wind standards.
• Proactive inspections and trimming to mitigate vegetation-related outages and wildfire risks.

To minimize the impact on monthly customer bills, Entergy Texas plans to seek $198 million in non-ERCOT grants from the Texas Energy Fund to help finance these projects. The company has also applied for federal dollars under the Department of Energy’s Grid Innovation and Resilience Partnerships program to invest more than $107 million to strengthen the Port Arthur grid, a portion of which would offset the cost of hardening projects included in Phase I.

This plan is but the latest in a long series of strategic investments to make the Southeast Texas power grid more resilient that Entergy has overseen since the early 2000s. Recent projects include the Palms substation on the Bolivar Peninsula, which is raised on platforms to better withstand potential storm surges, and the replacement of aging power lines and utility poles in the Port Arthur community to withstand weather events as strong as a Category 4 hurricane. A reminder that Hurricane Beryl was a Category 1 storm and devastated areas more than 100 miles off the coast.

The accelerated resiliency efforts proposed in Entergy Texas’ Resiliency Plan are a key component of the company’s Southeast Texas Energy Plan, also known as the STEP Ahead plan. This strategic initiative aims to add 1,600 megawatts of generation capacity to the Southeast Texas power grid by 2028 with several key components that include:

• Keeping rates affordable by striving to maintain that position during the buildout of the plan.
• Building more power generation immediately by submitting a robust, integrated plan to the Public Utility Commission of Texas that proposes to augment existing generation facilities with new power plants as soon as possible to reach the required 40% increase in capacity by 2028.
• Sufficient 24/7 dispatchable power by leveraging Southeast Texas’ existing infrastructure and unique regional characteristics to build new natural gas power plants whose design will enable carbon capture and hydrogen technology to help meet customer sustainability goals.
• Routing power to where it’s needed by upgrading existing transmission infrastructure and installing new transmission lines to quickly transport reliable power to the fast-growing areas of Southeast Texas.

Entergy Texas, Inc., a subsidiary of Entergy Corporation, a Fortune 500 electric company, provides electricity to approximately 512,000 customers in Montgomery County and 26 other counties.