Entergy conducts rolling blackouts because of ice storm

JACKSON, Miss. (WLBT) - If you’re an Entergy customer, you may have noticed your power going out intermittently Tuesday evening.

That’s because the company has been directed to initiate rolling power outages for customers across the southern service area, including Mississippi.

We’re told it is a last resort to prevent more extensive prolonged power outages that could seriously affect the reliability of the grid.

You can blame it on the extreme weather conditions causing unprecedented demand for electricity across much of the country. The outages lasted about an hour at a time.

Entergy CEO Haley Fiskackerly said, “The good news is we’ve already ended it... we are out of the woods for now. Now we are still dealing with a challenging situation with this weather event and the outages. We ask customers, though, to continue to conserve.

“We want to avoid a more damaging and longer event. We’re going to have to continue to monitor this. So it is possible it could happen again but we are hoping to see some warming temperatures later in this week. So we’ll get through this event and start to see more of those power plants come back online.”

Public Service Commissioner Brandon Presley tweeted “THANK YOU” to customers in the Northern District.

Presley tweeted, “Because of your help in reducing electric usage and other operational factors, electric outages that could have been awful were avoided tonight in large measure.”

Presley continued tweeting, “What we worried would be a series of forced outages past midnight ended at 9 o’clock.”