Frustrated New Orleans Council demands answers about winter power outages, gas bills

New Orleans City Council members expressed frustration Tuesday with the private utilities they regulate after last month’s severe winter weather led to power outages and a spike in natural gas bills.

Appearing before the council’s utility committee Tuesday were electricity provider Entergy New Orleans and natural gas supplier Delta Utilities.

New Orleans was largely spared the most severe conditions of January’s winter blasts, which caused widespread damage and days-long power outages in northern Louisiana.

But temperatures in the 20s and wind gusts above 40 mph were crippling enough to cause 9,400 outages in Gentilly, the Lower Garden District and along the lakefront, including at least a few that went on for hours.

The storm forced closures of local schools and government offices, but the conditions weren’t exactly unheard of in New Orleans: The city has now seen temperatures in the 20s in five of the last six years, and a minor tropical storm has sustained winds — not gusts — above 39 miles per hour.

“Our customers should not have to worry that power is going to go out during a minor threat,” District A Councilmember Aimee McCarron said.

Leroy Nix, an Entergy New Orleans vice president, said “wind speeds were very, very high for just a moment.”

“We didn’t see widespread outages and big, long durations. Our equipment is rated for this type of wind, but there’s more work to do on the system,” Nix said.

The largest of the recent outages, affecting 8,000 customers in the Lower Garden District, occurred when a year-old gasket, called an O-ring, at a nearby substation failed because of frigid temperatures, according to Entergy.

Asked by District B Lesli Harris if O-rings should be expected to fail within a year, Entergy’s metro reliability director, Dan Calamari, responded, “They should not.”

“We’re inspecting these and monitoring and making sure that we don’t have an issue,” Calamari said.

Meanwhile, wind gusts damaged a conductor along the lakefront and a shield wire in Gentilly.

McCarron noted that equipment failures caused 121,000 outages in the first nine months of 2025, accounting for nearly half of all outages, according to Entergy’s most recent reliability report.

Nix said that number is skewed because crews default to logging outages as equipment failures if the cause isn’t immediately obvious. He also said there had been fewer equipment failures in January 2026 than the same month last year.

Delta Utilities reported having no significant disruptions to its service during the weather.

But the blast of winter weather did spike natural gas prices, a cost that’s passed on directly to customers.

Delta Utilities leaders acknowledged customers’ frustrations with their bills while explaining that their rate structure hasn’t changed and that higher bills are instead a result of increased fuel prices.

City Council members urged the utility to do a better job at explaining charges to customers and at promoting its levelized billing program, which spreads out costs evenly throughout the year.

“People are confused about the bill,” Council Vice President Matthew Willard said. “One thing that I would ask of all of you is to just do a better job at conveying all of this.”

The cost of purchasing gas fluctuates based on the market and is adjusted on a monthly basis on customer bills. Between September 2025 and February 2026, fuel costs increased by 160%, the utility said. Those costs are passed directly to customers with zero markup or profit and are labeled on the bill as “Purchase Cost Adjustment.”

Delta Utilities CEO Timothy J. Poché said costs are expected to continue to rise through February’s billing cycle.

Delta attributed some of customers’ frustrations to the new billing regime.

For years, most Louisianans paid one utility bill that included gas and electric costs combined. That changed last summer when Delta, a portfolio company of the private equity firm Bernhard Capital Partners, bought the gas businesses owned by Entergy Louisiana and Entergy New Orleans.

In prior years, customers may not have noticed a winter spike in their utility bill because it was paired with a drop in electricity usage from not using an air conditioner, officials noted.

Another reason customers may be seeing higher-than-usual utility bills is that they’re no longer enrolled in levelized billing. Customers who used the program under Entergy weren’t automatically enrolled with Delta. Instead, they were required to opt in. That’s caused confusion for customers who have long relied on the program, council members said.

“When we separated the bills, there was an assumption that this would be a smooth transition, and people would not see a change,” said Council President JP Morrell. “I think there needs to be an aggressive effort on the part of Delta to say levelized billing is an option.”

Poché said they’re actively reaching out to customers who were previously enrolled to let them know that levelized billing is still an option.

Jesse George, a policy director at the Alliance for Affordable Energy, a consumer advocacy group, noted that gas prices are only expected to increase in the long run and urged the council to flex its regulatory muscle to “help people eliminate their dependence on natural gas.”