Homeowners deal with frequent outages, Entergy officials say they are working on solutions - WAFB
Homeowners deal with frequent outages, Entergy officials say they are working on solutions
BATON ROUGE, La. (WAFB) - Imagine living in a 300-hundred-thousand-dollar home, in a new neighborhood, and your power goes out repeatedly.
That’s the story for many who live in Gonzales, and they’re simply fed up.
Glyn Hays and his family moved into their dream home at The Reserve at Conway three years ago.
All was fine until this past May when he says the power company “Entergy” performed what they were told would be an upgrade to their utility lines.
“Since that upgrade, we’ve lost power 6 times,” explained Hays.
He says it’s happening when the weather outside is just fine, not a cloud in the sky.
“Some instances, it’s an hour or two. Last Friday, it was six hours. Sometimes, it’s eight to nine hours,” Hays added.
Bobbie Brooks lives a few streets over and has been here for three years.
“Our home temps are at 80 degrees with 65% humidity,” continued Brooks.
She says the last two outages have been on Fridays.
“It’s gotten to the point where I have to schedule things Thursday because I know I will lose power on Fridays,” said Brooks.
Hays and Brooks say they are fortunate to have small portable generators to save food and help cool down but know that not all their neighbors are as lucky.
“We pull it out. We run the cords but not everyone is that lucky. We have a lot of families with children and what about the elderly,” said Hays.
Entergy told us today they are putting in a new overhead power line by the end of the month which should help fix all of this.
Over the next several months, they’ll be installing new equipment that will let them switch over to redundant power sources when outages do happen.
Read Entergy’s full statement:
Entergy Louisiana is committed to providing customers with safe and reliable power, including customers in the Gonzales area. We recognize the inconvenience that customers experience when the power goes out, especially our customers who have experienced multiple outages within a short time frame. To improve reliability for customers in and around the Reserve at Conway, multiple projects have been identified and engineered over the past several weeks to both replace infrastructure and to add redundant sources of power to the area. Among these projects, the first project includes the construction of a new overhead powerline along Roddy Road crossing Airline Highway down to S. Purpera Avenue in Gonzales. This project is scheduled to be completed by the end of the month and will dramatically improve reliability for customers in and around the Reserve at Conway. Other projects slated for construction over the next several months include the construction of a new underground powerline to serve customers in the area and the installation of additional overhead distribution equipment to create a redundant source of power into the area. We value our customers and look forward to completing these projects to improve the overall level of service provided to them.
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