Power safely restored to Entergy Mississippi customers

JACKSON, Miss - Entergy Mississippi has restored power to the customers in Lawrence County near Monticello, due to the wildfire in the area. Approximately 179 customers were originally taken offline as a proactive safety measure to help protect the public from wildfire hazards. All power was restored by 7 p.m. Tuesday.

"Our crews have safely restored power to 100% of our customers in Lawrence County near Monticello" said Kamisha Quates, Entergy Mississippi's vice president of reliability. "By de-energizing a portion of our lines, we were able to help protect our community from the wildfire being fueled by energized equipment. Thank you to all customers who were affected and helped in this critical safety measure."

Entergy Mississippi remains on alert with dry conditions that can create wildfire hazards. We closely monitor many factors that may pose a risk to wildfires - drought conditions, red flag warnings, elevation, humidity, winds, rainfall levels and weather forecasts - so that we can take proactive measures. The National Weather Service will issue updates depending on the severity of the wildfire risk.

We restore power carefully and cautiously when it is safe to do so.

Entergy Mississippi distribution lines that serve customers in Lawrence County near Monticello were taken offline to safeguard lives, property and equipment in the area. If multiple electric lines are de-energized for safety purposes, we must work carefully and cautiously to avoid overloading our grid by restoring power to everyone at the same time. Our crews must thoroughly make sure lines in a damaged area are safely repaired before re-energizing.

• When an outage occurs, restoring all the customers on a given feeder (power conductor line) has the potential to create large, instantaneous power demands.
• And that power demand could be higher than the built-in protective devices on a line can handle, meaning equipment could trip offline or cause more damage.
• Rather than simply energizing an entire power line all at once, we must bring customers back online one section at a time to ensure public safety and avoid damage to the power grid.
• During extreme temperature, hot or cold, customers tend to use a lot of electricity, either keeping the heat or air conditioning on or other devices running.
• And when power is disrupted, many customers leave their HVAC systems and appliances turned on, creating too much energy demand all at once when we try to restore power.
• We have devices in place that are designed to protect our system during times of normal, day-to-day operations and power demand and most weather and other contingencies.
• But during weather extremes, we must implement processes to make sure we protect our system and also do the right thing by our customers. That means restoring power in a way that best ensures safety and reliability for them as well as our employees.

Customers should remain diligent and safety aware.

Customers should always follow their local or state orders in case of an emergency and observe any statewide or partial burn bans in place. All customers who have their phone number on record with us will be notified about their power status.

Find additional safety resources:

Find more information by visiting, entergy.com/wildfires.

Media inquiries:

Tamica Smith Jeuitt

[email protected]