Cleco Unleashes Largest-Ever $Millions Grid Overhaul to Slash Power Outages
Cleco has launched its biggest grid resiliency investment in company history, kicking off more than 550 projects across Louisiana to sharply reduce power outages and accelerate restoration times. This urgent, multifaceted plan is reshaping critical parts of the electric grid right now to better withstand storms and emergencies, delivering stronger, faster service to nearly 300,000 customers.
The five-year overhaul is already underway in key Louisiana communities including Covington, Eunice, Jeanerette, Lacombe, Madisonville, New Iberia, Pineville, and Slidell. Efforts focus on upgrading and replacing aging electric equipment, undergrounding portions of the network, reinforcing utility poles, and elevating substations above flood plains — all critical moves designed to block outages before they happen and get power back on the moment it goes out.
Immediate Impact: Faster Restoration and Stronger Systemwide Resilience
Andre Guillory, Cleco’s Chief Customer Officer, highlighted the immediate customer benefits: “Our resiliency efforts benefit residential customers and a portion of the projects will focus on critical customers, like hospitals and emergency services, whose work is essential during times of crisis.” This emphasizes the plan’s urgency in protecting vulnerable locations that must maintain uninterrupted power for safety and public health.
Danny Rider, Director of Distribution Reliability and Resiliency at Cleco, stressed the sweeping scale and financial advantages of this role-out. “These projects will further strengthen systemwide resilience, reduce storm-related costs, and result in fewer outages and faster restoration times for our customers,” Rider said.
The work involves assessing more than 700 utility poles for maintenance or replacement in these communities, ensuring the backbone of the electric infrastructure remains robust against increasingly severe weather.
Cleco’s Proven Track Record Boosts Confidence as Demand for Reliable Power Surges
For nearly three decades, Cleco has exceeded performance standards set by the Louisiana Public Service Commission, ensuring that customer power is maintained more than 99.9% of the time. This latest plan is aimed at not only maintaining but vastly improving upon that record in the face of intensifying storms and climate-related challenges.
As a regional energy holding company, Cleco Power LLC operates eight generating units with total capacity of 2,676 megawatts. Its service area represents a critical regional grid segment providing wholesale and retail electricity throughout Louisiana. This ambitious resiliency plan reinforces broader energy security themes relevant across coastal and vulnerable regions, including states like Delaware where grid hardening is increasingly prioritized.
What Happens Next: Phased Upgrades and Ongoing Community Impact
The ongoing project phases will continue over the next few years with close community coordination and efforts to minimize service disruption during upgrades. Customers and emergency planners alike can expect fewer blackout incidents and faster responses as the hardening takes hold.
This major investment signals a growing national trend as utilities respond proactively to storm risks and the rising costs tied to outages. For Delaware residents, Cleco’s model offers a blueprint for how energy providers must act now to safeguard the power grid and public safety in an era of unpredictable weather and rising demand.
The Delaware Herald will continue monitoring these developments as Cleco’s upgrades progress and reports from other utilities emerge on similar resilience efforts nationwide.
“Our resiliency efforts benefit residential customers and a portion of the projects will focus on critical customers, like hospitals and emergency services, whose work is essential during times of crisis,” said Andre Guillory, Cleco Chief Customer Officer.
