Entergy Louisiana earlier this month filed a request with the Louisiana Public Service Commission for approval to build a 112-megawatt floating natural gas power station equipped with black-start capability and the ability to rapidly start up and ramp down.
Investor-owned Entergy said the proposed $411-million Bayou Power Station would sit on a barge across from a substation in Leeville and would play a crucial role in supporting areas like Port Fourchon, Golden Meadow, Leeville, and Grand Isle through a microgrid system.
The areas are on or near Louisiana’s flood-prone southern coastal Bayou region that is often battered by tropical storms and hurricanes. The region also plays a key role in the state’s energy and fishing industries.
Port Fourchon, for instance, services 95 percent of the Gulf of Mexico’s deepwater energy production and is a base of operations for 10 to 15 percent of the nation’s domestic and foreign oil. And the land between Golden Meadow and Grand Isle is a hub for the state’s multi-billion dollar seafood industry.
The Bayou Power Station includes the expansion of the Leeville substation and transmission connections to ensure seamless power delivery while the microgrid system would provide essential backup power during outages.
Entergy said the gas-fired plant would complement resilience projects the utility has completed over the past couple years, including the elevation of the Caminada substation on a concrete platform 20 feet off the ground; upgrading around seven miles of transmission lines between Cut Off and Golden Meadow; and undergrounding around eight miles of distribution lines along Louisiana Highway 1 from Leeville to Grand Isle.
In December 2022, Entergy Louisiana filed a proposal for the first, $5 billion phase of its proposed Entergy Future Ready resilience plan with the Louisiana Public Service Commission. The plan sought approval of the first five years of a $9.6 billion, 10-year resilience plan that the utility said would accelerate the restoration of power and reduce the costs associated with restoring power following major storms.
Entergy noted that in the past 50 years, nine major hurricanes have hit the U.S. with six making landfall in the last five years and two -- Laura and Ida – hitting Louisiana directly.
