Powering the future: Entergy’s pioneering journey in grid innovation and resilience

Keeping the lights on with preventative transformer maintenance

One of the perennial challenges for utilities is unplanned downtime due to asset failures. One of Chapman’s first examples followed the process of repairing a failed transformer. Traditionally, this is completely reactive: a transformer fails, customers lose power, and a series of steps are executed to restore service, with little to no communication between the customer and the utility — often leaving customers in the dark both literally and figuratively.

Entergy is turning this around by developing an AI tool that monitors current spikes delivered to residential smart meters. These spikes are highly correlated with upstream transformer issues. So, when the tool detects a potential problem, it runs an automation that generates a work order and dispatches a truck to test the transformer, then notifies affected customers that they may see an outage during scheduled maintenance.

By reengineering the entire process, Entergy can minimize unexpected outages and keep its customers informed as to when they may see an interruption in service, significantly enhancing their experience.

Partnering with AiDASH for vegetation management

Vegetation encroachment is another challenge facing utilities, which must balance risk management with budget constraints. “No matter how much money you have, it never feels like it’s enough,” said Chapman. “Our budget in this space is massive…you’re talking about eight to nine figures on any given year where we’re focused on vegetation management.”

Back in 2019, Entergy partnered with AiDASH to implement its Intelligent Vegetation Management System™ (IVMS™), making a bold bet on satellite-powered AI technology. The impact was immediate, according to Chapman. “The very next year — and a trend that has continued since that time — we’ve had our lowest vegetation-related customer interruptions in our history.” Along the way, Entergy reformulated its business processes around the technology, taking the time to digitize and automate planning.

All the upfront effort paid off for the company in 2023, when a severe drought created exceptional fire risks that Entergy had to mitigate across its service territory.

“Because we had digitized the work processes, we were actually pretty well organized,” said Chapman. “We had our entire team…using the same platform to plan, prioritize, and execute the work. And what we were able to do from that is, we were very quickly able to go out, identify, and mitigate more than 20,000 high-risk trees before they became an issue.”

Entergy continues to reap new benefits from its early investment in AI. In a specific example, Chapman said that by extracting data from IVMS for bid packets, the company improved its procurement process. Vendors could bid more competitively with better scope and condition details, leading to cost savings.

Scaling out asset inspection using computer vision

Moving forward, Entergy plans to expand its asset inspection program beyond transformer failure prediction. Using computer vision models, the company can get even more granular (and efficient) about the way it anticipates potential issues.

By mounting cameras on their existing fleet vehicles, the company aims to capture images of assets like insulators and poles in real time. AI models can analyze those images to detect issues, such as broken insulator disks or leaning poles, and generate actionable alerts.

This approach turns every company vehicle into a mobile inspector, vastly increasing the frequency and coverage of asset assessments without significant additional costs.

Enhancing the customer experience with AI-assisted tools

Customer service is another area where Entergy sees AI improving outcomes. Right now, the company’s contact centers deal with 4-5 million agent-handled calls per year. Each call results in an experience that can be classified as either good or bad.

To drive more positive interactions, Entergy developed a customer sentiment tool to flag anything that might have been construed as negative, allowing the company to begin identifying opportunities for additional training or proactive follow-up.

The next step is developing an agent-facing AI assistant that analyzes calls in real time, offering actionable guidance to minimize call time and maximize resolution rates. The goal is to improve first-call resolution through a more consistent experience, even in a contact center environment with typically high turnover.

Innovating storm damage assessment

Severe weather is a way of life in Entergy’s service area, and the traditional ground-based damage assessments after a heavy storm are time-consuming and can take days to complete.

In response, the company is developing the Airborne Damage Assessment Tool (AirDAT), which uses fixed-wing aircraft equipped with LiDAR and high-resolution cameras. Flying at 2,000 feet and covering large areas quickly, these planes capture detailed images, even in hard-to-reach areas.

AI models process that data to identify damaged assets, generating a comprehensive assessment relatively quickly — a matter of hours. This rapid turnaround allows Entergy to prioritize repairs, inform customers more accurately about restoration times, and deploy crews more effectively.

During a proof-of-concept run following Hurricane Francine, the technology visualized and identified utility poles that were leaning over and trees that fell on power lines, validating its potential. Entergy aims to have this system operational by the next hurricane season.