New Orleans is a city unlike any other on the grid. It’s the only place in Louisiana whose
electric utility — Entergy New Orleans — is
regulated by the City Council rather than the state. That same utility also supplies natural
gas across most of Orleans Parish, which makes a natural-gas standby generator unusually
convenient here: many homes can run one straight off the existing line.
Geography is the other half of the story. Much of the city sits at or below sea level behind
the levees, and large parts of Orleans Parish fall inside FEMA flood zones. When the power
goes out, drainage and sump systems go with it — so backup power isn’t a luxury here, it’s
part of how a home weathers a storm.
And the grid’s weak point in New Orleans isn’t a shortage of power plants. After Hurricane
Ida, it became painfully clear that the vulnerability is the transmission
lines that carry electricity into the city — when they fail, even a brand-new local
power station can’t keep the lights on.
A permanently installed standby generator sidesteps all of it. It detects the outage and
restores power automatically — usually within seconds — and runs for as long as the grid is
down.
See how installation works →