Entergy

Entergy

Type	Public
Traded as	NYSE: ETR S&P 500 Component
Industry	Energy industry
Founded	1913
Headquarters	Entergy Tower New Orleans, Louisiana
Services	Electricity (and natural gas in New Orleans and Baton Rouge, La)
Revenue	US$13.1 Billion (FY 2008)
Operating income	US$2.43 Billion (FY 2008)
Net income	US$1.24 Billion (FY 2008)
Total assets	US$36.6 Billion (FY 2008)
Total equity	US$8.28 Billion (FY 2008)
Employees	14,700 (2008)
Website	http://entergy.com

Entergy Corporation, which celebrates its 100th birthday in 2013, is an integrated energy company engaged primarily in electric power production and retail distribution operations. Entergy owns and operates power plants with approximately 30,000 megawatts of electric generating capacity, including more than 10,000 megawatts of nuclear power, making it one of the nation’s leading nuclear generators. Entergy delivers electricity to 2.8 million utility customers in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas. Entergy has annual revenues of more than $10 billion and approximately 15,000 employees. It is headquartered in the Central Business District of New Orleans, Louisiana.

History

Entergy's story began Nov. 13, 1913, with a pile of sawdust and a handshake between H. H. Foster, president of the Arkansas Land and Lumber Company, and Harvey Couch. Couch used Foster's sawdust as fuel to generate electricity for his power company. On Dec.17, 1914, Malvern and Arkadelphia were lit up as the generators at the lumber company were turned on for the first time. Now called Arkansas Light and Power Company, Arkansas’ newest endeavor to bring the benefits of electricity to the rural south began with two 550 kilowatt generators and 22 miles of transmission lines. Couch’s company grew rapidly. Ten years later he completed construction of the Remmel hydroelectric dam on the Ouachita River. His transmission system now covered 300 miles. With a 9,000 kilowatt generator in place, Couch set his sights beyond the state’s boundaries. Couch began acquiring independent electric properties in Jackson, Vicksburg, Columbus and Greenville, Miss. His plan was to develop an interconnected system much like the one in Arkansas, but between states. On April 12, 1923, Mississippi Power and Light Company was incorporated in Mississippi. The fuel and electricity for this new company would come from Louisiana. The Louisiana Power Company was formed so Couch could take full advantage of the abundant supply of natural gas found in northern Louisiana. In November 1925, Couch’s Sterlington generating station was placed online. The largest power plant south of St. Louis, its 30,000 kilowatt capacity was owned by three companies: Arkansas Light and Power, Mississippi Power and Light, and Louisiana Power Company.

Samuel Insull was Thomas Edison’s business secretary. He moved to Chicago to build a multilevel utility organization that included holding companies, which held other holding companies. The profit-taking opportunities inherent in his pyramid scheme set off a national acquisition craze. By 1932 there were eight holding companies controlling 73 percent of the investor-owned electric business. The scheme collapsed and public outcry produced the Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935. PUHCA broke up the multilevel holding companies and required them to register with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The companies were required to specialize in one service and relinquish their non-related properties. EBASCO was one of those companies. In 1949 EBASCO’s Electric Power and Light Corporation was dissolved. In its place, Middle South Utilities, Inc., Entergy former name, was formed as a holding company for Arkansas Power and Light, Louisiana Power and Light, Mississippi Power and Light, and New Orleans Public Service, Inc. By special request of New Orleans officials, NOPSI was allowed to keep its gas and transit operations in the city. In MSU’s 1949 annual report, the company’s first president, Edgar Dixon, noted in his letter to shareholders that the year was “one of growth and progress for the companies of the Middle South System.” He reported that the company was paying a dividend of 27.5 cents a share to more than 25,000 stockholders “who reside in every state of the country and in 24 foreign countries.” At the end of its first year of operations, MSU served over 625,000 customers in more than 1,600 communities.

The 1950s and 1960s were decades of growth and prosperity for the company. Capacity grew with demand and the system met all challenges and opportunities. The system’s largest generating station, gas-fired NineMile Point near New Orleans, came online in the 1950s. Little Gypsy, located on the Mississippi River upriver from New Orleans, became the world’s first fully automated generating unit in 1961. Edgar Dixon died in 1962 and was succeeded by Gerald Andrus. As MSU’s second president, Andrus’ first major achievement was the creation of the service company, Middle South Services, Inc. (now known as Entergy Services, Inc.) in 1963. The company provided the common services, finance, tax, engineering, communications and human resources support for all five MSU companies. In 1965 the system was hit by Hurricane Betsy, then the worst storm in the company’s history. Betsy destroyed the southeastern end of the system. In the New Orleans area, 90 percent of the system was damaged or destroyed. All of Louisiana Power and Light’s customers in southern Louisiana were without power. With help from their sister companies and neighboring utilities, nearly all customers were restored within nine days. LP&L’s publication Fifty Years of Service noted at the time that Hurricane Betsy had inflicted “the greatest weather-related damage to a single utility.”

In 1968 the system entered the nuclear age when Arkansas Power and Light was granted a construction permit to build Arkansas Nuclear One Unit One near Russellville, Ark. By the end of the 1960s, Andrus reported in the annual report that the number of customers had grown to more than 1 million. Generating capacity, primarily using oil and gas, had grown, too. But this period of rapid expansion came to an abrupt halt in the 1970s as a result of the 1973 OPEC oil embargo. The system responded by continuing to diversify its fuel mix. In 1970, LP&L announced plans for its Waterford 3 nuclear unit near Taft, La. Two years later, Mississippi Power and Light announced plans for the Grand Gulf Nuclear Station near Port Gibson, Miss. The same year, System Fuels Inc. was formed to buy fuel for the entire system. This centralized method of fuel procurement meant lower prices and better rates for consumers.

The company officially changed its name to Entergy Corporation at the annual meeting of stockholders in May 1989. The new name was used to forge a new direction. The name Entergy is a composite of the words “enterprise,” “energy” and “synergy,” three qualities that described the company’s new approach to navigating the rapidly evolving marketplace.

After Hurricane Katrina hit the city of New Orleans, Entergy temporarily relocated the 1,500 employees and contractors who worked at the headquarters to other cities, including Clinton, Mississippi, Little Rock, Arkansas, and The Woodlands, Texas. In April 2006 the company began moving back into its New Orleans headquarters. Since its inception, Entergy has been headquartered in New Orleans. That city had also been home to Entergy's various corporate predecessors since 1922.

Operations

Entergy's service territory includes the southeast corner of Louisiana and the cities of Lafayette and Baton Rouge, the eastern three-fourths of Arkansas, the western half of Mississippi and part of southeastern Texas, including the Beaumont-Port Arthur-Orange and Conroe-Woodlands-Kingwood areas.

A member of the Fortune 500, Entergy owns and operates power plants with approximately 30,000 megawatts of electric generating capacity, and it is the one of the largest nuclear generator in the United States after Exelon Corporation. It had annual revenues of more than $10 billion in 2012 and approximately 15,000 employees.

Entergy's main operating segments consist of the U.S. Utility segment and the Non-Utility Nuclear segment. The U.S. Utility segment provides retail electricity services to approximately 2.7 million customers in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas. The Non-Utility Nuclear segment operates a total of ten nuclear power plants:

• New York – Indian Point Energy Center and FitzPatrick
• Massachusetts – Pilgrim
• Vermont – Vermont Yankee
• Michigan – Palisades Nuclear Station
• Arkansas – Arkansas Nuclear One
• Louisiana – River Bend and Waterford
• Mississippi – Grand Gulf
• Nebraska – support services for the Cooper Nuclear Station through 2014

The company also announced that it plans to obtain a license for a new reactor at its River Bend site, although the company has not decided whether to build it. The company's nuclear division is headquartered in Jackson, Mississippi.

Entergy operates over 41 plants using natural gas, nuclear, coal, oil and hydroelectric power with approximately 30,000 megawatts of electric generating capacity to serve its 2.7 million customers in the Gulf South. Its extensive transmission system carries approximately 23,000 megawatts of power across more than 15,500 miles (24,900 km) of interconnected lines within a 112,000-square-mile (290,000 km²) area.

Entergy is the only U.S. utility to make the Dow Jones Sustainability Index (DJSI) nine years in a row. The DJSI is a listing of the companies whose overall environmental, social and economic sustainability performance scores were in the top 10 percent for their sector. Entergy was named in 2008 to Forbes list of America's Most Trustworthy Companies, a ranking based on corporate governance practices and accounting transparency.

On February 24, 2010, the Vermont Senate voted to prevent the Vermont Public Service Board from issuing the necessary certificate that would allow for the Vermont Yankee plant to have its license renewed for another 20 years. The vote will not affect current operation of the plant, and the issue could be revisited by the legislature in either a special session later in 2010 or in its next regular session in 2011.

Public service

In 2010 Entergy and its charitable foundation awarded more than $16.3 million in grants to almost 3,000 nonprofit organizations. Entergy along with its employees and customers raised more than $2.3 million in local bill payment assistance funds in 2010. Entergy employees and retirees logged more than 68,000 volunteer hours in 2009.

See also

• Arkansas Power and Light Building, now known as the Entergy Building

External links

• Entergy Corporation
• Energy Star