re: Entergy Louisiana customers could see a 15-year, $5 a month Screw Job

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Sure, they can insure the infrastructure, install metal/concrete poles, bury transmissions lines, design everything to withstand 300mph winds. And then we pay for it and they make even more profits because they are allowed a percentage profit on any capital improvements. And then people see even higher bills. Entergy offers some of the lowest energy costs in the country.

I also want to add that the low energy costs also attract all of the large industrial customers from all over the world to build here and create jobs for a large portion of the state.

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Spoken like an Entergy employee. How many large industrial customers from all over the world are knocking down LA's doors to move here due to Entergy?

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How many large industrial customers from all over the world are knocking down LA's doors to move here due to Entergy?

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Yuhang Chemical in St James was one

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But more importantly for the comparison, what is the cost per mile to do it the traditional way, with poles and such.

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You are touching on one of the most important factors that everyone seems to completely miss. You hear cost estimates for underground lines in the neighborhood of 5x, 10x, whatever colored to above-ground. But that’s a misleading comparison.

You aren’t comparing construction of an underground grid with construction of an above-ground grid. You are comparing construction of an underground grid with replacement of a tiny fraction of the existing above ground grid each Hurricane.

I bring this up because saying “underground power is 10x more expensive” is deceptive. It’s 10x more expensive than replacing the entire existing above-ground distribution grid.

As for the actual costs, here’s something I posted in another one of the threads on this same topic.. North Carolina did a study when people there made the same demands after a nasty ice storm in 2002. An excerpt from their report:

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The Public Staff has determined that replacing the existing overhead distribution lines of the Utilities with underground lines would be prohibitively expensive. Such an undertaking would cost approximately $41 billion, nearly six times the net book value of the Utilities’ current distribution assets, and would require approximately 25 years to complete. The ultimate impact of the capital costs alone on an average residential customer’s monthly electric bill would be an increase of more than 125%. Rates would also be impacted by the higher O&M costs associated with direct-buried underground systems, particularly in urban areas, where underground conductors are four times more costly to maintain than overhead facilities.

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What I don’t understand is, it’s a natural disaster..yes they are having to pay to repair things needed, but let’s be real it’s not like it’s going to put the company in red, they will still have a huge profit. So Entergy is trying to make us pay for something we can’t control…. Personally I think that its just the price of the business your in

It worked out great in Texas.

That one ice storm perfect storm electricity shortage will never happen again as ECROT moved very quickly to change the standards of generators.

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What I don’t understand is, it’s a natural disaster..yes they are having to pay to repair things needed, but let’s be real it’s not like it’s going to put the company in red, they will still have a huge profit. So Entergy is trying to make us pay for something we can’t control…. Personally I think that its just the price of the business your in

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What you actually don’t understand is that Entergy’s profitability is regulated by the state Public Service Commission. You can’t limit their return on equity to 10-11% on the one hand, while also expecting them to just absorb any unplanned costs that arise.

In most industries, the service provider (Entergy) would have already baked the risk of incurring these costs into the rates. But that’s not how it works with regulated utilities.

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It worked out great in Texas.

That one ice storm perfect storm electricity shortage will never happen again as ECROT moved very quickly to change the standards of generators.

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I genuinely can’t tell if this is sarcasm. Distribution is a regulated utility in Texas just like it is everywhere else. Their “de-regulated” generation market has zero impact on upkeep and repairs of power lines.

Also, generators in Texas are still in a holding pattern on freeze protection projects waiting for guidance on what, specifically, will be required and who is going to pay for it.