Meet industrial needs and replace aging power plants
New companies are moving here and companies currently in Louisiana are growing quickly.
So fast in fact, that Louisiana’s largest utility company, Entergy, is working to make sure that they will have enough power to support the growth.
Michael Burns, form Entergy Louisiana says they're looking to meet industrial needs and replace aging power plants.
He said, “Louisiana’s economy is booming with more than $50 billion of investment in new and expanding industrial facilities driven in part by relatively low natural gas and electricity prices. This is bringing scores of new jobs to our citizens, and Entergy’s Louisiana companies are doing everything we can to help the state. We’re looking at a number of options to satisfy their needs as well as replace aging power plants and expiring power contracts. We’re exploring the possibilities of building new power plants, buying other power plants, signing new contracts to buy power from other companies, and investing in transmission to reliably deliver power to these new industrial customers”.
If Entergy decides to build one power plant, the estimated cost would be close to a billion dollars.
It’s safe to say that Entergy customer will be paying for that if it happens.
To address concerns about this, Burns said, “We believe we’ll be able to do that and still keep our customers’ costs among the lowest in the nation. We believe growing power sales from an expanding economy will allow us to spread the cost of these new investments over a larger base, reducing the impact to all customers”.