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New storm restoration charge coming to Entergy customers' bills

1 year 2 months 1 week ago Thursday, January 19 2023 Jan 19, 2023 January 19, 2023 4:45 PM January 19, 2023 in News
Source: WBRZ

BATON ROUGE - We all knew we'd be paying for it eventually.

The Louisiana Public Service Commission has approved more Entergy restoration costs. Entergy will be financing another $1.5 billion in storm costs using low-cost bonds. That's on top of the $3.6 billion already approved. The costs are related to restoring the grid after Hurricane Ida in 2021, a storm that brought historic wind and damage.

All that work to restore power eventually gets passed onto the customer. The costs will be collected over 15 years. Commissioner Craig Greene says when negotiated he wanted to make sure Entergy contributed some. The utility company will be offering up $180 million out of the more than $5 billion.

The charge will appear as a line item on your bill. For a 1,000 kWh customer, it'll cost about $5.50 a month. Louisiana customers are already paying about $9 a month for other storm costs.

"A lot of people are on fixed incomes, so when they go up like this it's really hard for them and yet we have to spread it around somewhat equally based on how much is used and what was destroyed," Greene said.

Those fees could show up on bills as soon as April.

At the same time, Entergy is being told it has to pay back money to its customers. A ruling by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission found problems with accounting practices involving the Grand Gulf nuclear power plant. The agency says that Entergy had been over-billing customers for years.

Greene says it's a huge success for rate-payers.

"It'll go through the appeals process but we're still very optimistic that we'll get a large chunk back," he said.

About $160 million would be due to Entergy Louisiana customers.

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