Ask City Council to Act on Outages, Pass the ‘Virtual Power Plant’
The New Orleans City Council is holding a special Utility Committee meeting on the massive Memorial Day power outage tomorrow, Tue, June 3 at 10am at City Hall.
The agenda for the meeting, which has only 1 item, is here.
This is an important meeting, that's flying under the radar.
It's important for two reasons:
First, the Memorial Day outage was not a fluke; it is a harbinger of what's to come if we the City Council doesn't act.
Second, the Council has a rare opportunity to act decisively over the next few months — by passing the Virtual Power Plant (VPP) proposal submitted by Together New Orleans and the Alliance for Affordable Energy.
The "ask" is to take action in two ways:
#1) Attend the Council meeting tomorrow, Tue, June 3 in City Council Chambers, 1300 Perdido St. We'll meet in Council chambers at 9:45am.
Please shoot us an email here if you can attend.
#2) Please submit a online public comment by 8am urging Council to act on outages and pass the VPP. Comments are submitted HERE.
Comments must be submitted by 8am tomorrow to be included in the 10am meeting.
When submitting comments, please be respectful and brief and share:
Why power outages matter to you.
That we cannot afford to delay action.
Ask Council to pass the Virtual Power Plant.
A presentation on TNO-AAE's proposal to create a Virtual Power Plant proposal is available here.
Please forward a copy of your comments to contact@togethernola.org.
Here’s the background
New Orleans is in what's called a "load pocket" — part of the electric grid where electricity demand is high, but the ability to import it from outside is limited. That means we can’t rely on distant generators to keep the lights on. We need local generation, inside that "pocket".
When we need it and don't have it, the system shuts down -- which is what happened last Sunday.
Part of the solution is a Virtual Power Plant -- thousands of big, solar-charged batteries on homes, community centers and businesses, which are a) great, b) back-up people's homes and c) provide power from within the pocket when the grid gets stressed.
DOE proposed this idea for New Orleans in 2012. Council did not act.
After Ida, the Council spent three years studying this idea as part of its resilience docket. Entergy opposed it. Council did not act.
Last October, at TNO and the Alliance for Affordable Energy's request, City Council opened a new docket, which, if approved, would finally create a Virtual Power Plant for New Orleans.
Entergy opposes it. And it's up to the Council to decide.
So we need to ask City Council to step up. To urge them to demand action for real solutions -- to pass the VPP.