Louisiana Assessing Damage Caused by Hurricane Gustav

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--The state of Louisiana was ravaged by Hurricane Gustav earlier this week and in terms of power outages, officials are assessing damage to rival that of Hurricane Katrina. Working in conjunction with Louisiana's largest electricity producer, Entergy Corporation (NYSE:ETR) (New Orleans), engineers are estimating the difficulty and scale of work. Diligently working to restore service as quickly as possible, Entergy has a team of 11,000 restoration workers servicing transmission lines and assisting power plants in resuming operations. Entergy has reported that in terms of power outages, Hurricane Gustav will be the second worst in the company's 95-year history. Early Tuesday, the company had reported 850,000 power outages, which surpassed the 800,000 previously reported by Hurricane Rita in 2005.

Louisiana's two largest nuclear facilities, the River Bend Nuclear Power Station (St. Francisville) and Waterford Three Nuclear Power Station (Killona), remained offline Thursday. Both stations have a combined total of 2,119 megawatts (MW) that is currently unavailable. Entergy is taking all safety precautions in bringing the nuclear units back into service and is hoping to start operations on these units by later this weekend.

Entergy owns and operates approximately 30,000 MW of electricity generating capacity. It is the second largest nuclear generator in the United States and delivers electricity to 2.7 million customers in Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Texas.

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