NEW ORLEANS – Entergy New Orleans said it is continuing infrastructure upgrades at its 300 megawatt Derbigny substation to help deliver energy to more than 9,000 customers in the Central Business District. Among these upgrades are new laser installations to deter birds, upgraded fencing to prevent further animal intrusions, additional passive animal mitigation, and multiple breaker replacements. A new protection clearing scheme that identifies, reacts, and responds more rapidly if there is a fault or failure in the substation will also be completed by the end of the year. The operational flexibility and reliability of the substation greatly depends upon the protection scheme. The new upgrades will help mitigate the risk of outages and shorten power restoration times in the area.
“We continue to take a holistic view of how we plan infrastructure upgrades that will benefit the largest number of customers,” said Deanna Rodriguez, president and CEO of Entergy New Orleans. “This project is a perfect example of investing in a specific part of the grid with a high economic impact to the entire city.”
The substation contains three transformers for redundancy and is currently undergoing work on sectionalization, which will “further isolate faults, protect equipment and minimize outage durations,” according to the utility.
Since 2016, Entergy New Orleans has invested approximately $397 million on projects to strengthen its infrastructure. It says the investments have helped reduce the frequency of power outages by approximately 30% and reduced the duration of outages by approximately 28%.The Derbigny substation upgrades are among a number of investments in the grid across Orleans Parish, including the Avenue C substation transformer replacement, the underground transformer replacement project in the Central Business District and French Quarter, and the New Orleans Power Station, which provides 128 megawatts of needed local generation and played a role in New Orleans’ recovery from Hurricane Ida.
