There has been plenty of rain, wind, lightning and thunder this summer, followed by numerous power outages. That’s led to more than a few complaints to the Louisiana Public Service Commission.
“’There were eight outages from Tuesday through Sunday of last week’,” PSC member Scott Angelle read from a stack of messages, during Wednesday’s meeting. “He just feels there were too many to just write off as due to ‘weather-related’ issues.”
“This one says, ‘This is like livin’ in a third world country’. He expects better reliability,” Angelle continued, adding that constituents want answers.
“The folks in the area are not chronic complainers. They’re chronic recipients of power outages.”
In this case, the complaints were against Entergy, which admitted there has been a 51-percent increase in “customer interruptions,” compared to the previous year. The power company that serves Baton Rouge has tried to say many of the problems with outages and restoration of service are due to the city’s many trees.
Public Service Commissioner Clyde Holloway said property owners aren’t helping when they tell the tree-trimmers “no”.
“You know the landowners, or the homeowners, are going to have to realize sooner or later that you’re either going to trim the damn trees or you’re gonna blow on your line. If they don’t allow Entergy or anyone else to go in and trim ‘em, it’s not ever gonna get any better,” Holloway said.
Angelle says blaming the property owners isn’t fair.
“It’s not that we have unwilling homeowners. In my mind, it’s that we have a trim cycle that’s not aggressive enough,” Angelle stated.
Public Service Commissioner Foster Campbell reminded the rest of the group that this been a problem in north Louisiana, as well, with SWEPCO. The PSC did a full investigation of those complaints.
“These are the only people furnishing electricity. They are monopolies. You can’t get it anywhere else,” Campbell said, figuratively pointing the finger of blame at the power companies.
Angelle said if trees truly are the problem, then increasing the frequency of Entergy’s trimming might alleviate it.
“It’s every four years. It may need to be every three years. We need to get some science behind this,” Angelle said, by way of urging the PSC to analyze and study the issue.
The state’s utility regulator voted to authorize a study of tree growth rates, trimming cycles – and response times for outages.
“Let’s just have a little check-up,” Campbell said, with a grin.