A Louisiana rural utility is spending big on a storm-resilient grid. Is it worth it?
When Hurricane Laura made landfall in the small town of
For rural residents, this meant losing power, in some cases for months.
"It hit exactly where our system is,"
The rural power company is one of the largest in the state by territory, serving households and businesses across five parishes. "There was not a line section that was not affected," Heinen said.
Trying to restore power to its 7,500 members as quickly as possible, the electric co-op called in help from fellow rural power providers across the country. A tent city was built at
"We took a step back and said: Let's not do the same thing again; we'll get the same results," Heinen said of the co-op, which at that point had seen its system severely damaged by four hurricanes over the span of 15 years. This last time, JDEC spent at least
Now, more than two years after the storms, JDEC is preparing to spend another
The total of more than half a billion dollars would come from
Working with a team of consultants, the co-op is rebuilding its
The work comes as the population of
'Critical Infrastructure'
Founded following the Franklin Roosevelt-era rural electrification program, rural electric co-ops provide power to sparsely populated areas deemed unprofitable by investor-owned utilities. But long gone are the days when rural co-ops' main task was keeping the lights on at the farmhouse.
"We need to have a hardened system because of the critical infrastructure that is down there," Heinen said, referring to the oil and gas pipelines running through the co-op's southernmost territory.
Five of its substations along the coast, which provide electricity to
With the growing demand for LNG and plans for more export facilities to be built in the region, the newly hardened infrastructure will "serve not only what is there, but what may be coming in the future," Heinen noted.
JDEC's system has provided power for the construction phase of Venture Global's Calcasieu Pass LNG export facility and, in its plans submitted to the
Creating an infrastructure for power delivery that can withstand increasingly destructive storms lays the groundwork for a successful recovery, said
"By preparing and investing in resilience like that, the community can strengthen their finances, they can attract more investors, improve the livability for folks there," Bailey said. "If the electricity system itself is vulnerable, that leads to a lot of community-level, economy-wide risk."
Economic impacts and investment potential aside, Laura's aftermath showed the risks to human life that a loss of power brings. Of the 31 storm-related deaths reported by the
"It's incredibly dangerous," Bailey said of the lack of power following a destructive storm, especially when paired with extreme heat, as is often the case in southern
'Sometimes, Mother Nature wins'
Even the most resilient system doesn't provide a guarantee that power won't be lost during the next destructive storm.
"Everything man-made has a tendency to fail at some point," said
But the new system, as it's designed, will be capable of supplying power throughout its grid, even if individual substations should falter, according to Heinen and the co-op's hired team of engineers.
"You'll have a system that is way more hardened, resilient and able to withstand storms," Heinen said. "Let's build it bigger and better so we don't have to do this every time."
JDEC and its consultants are hoping to sign construction contracts in the first quarter of the year, with work expected to start in the fall, a gap attributed to long lead times for parts and materials. If all goes according to plan, the new-and-improved infrastructure should be up and running by
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