Electricity fickle, 3 tell Public Service Commission

Hot Springs Village residents say Entergy service subpar

A map showing the location of Hot Springs Village.
A map showing the location of Hot Springs Village.

For years, Hot Springs Village residents have lived with subpar electricity service, the community's leaders say and even Entergy Arkansas executives acknowledge.

Last month, three residents let the Arkansas Public Service Commission know about it.

Harvey Shelton, president of the Hot Springs Village Board of Directors; Michael Dollar, executive director of the Hot Springs Village Area Chamber of Commerce; and Bob Hebert, a businessman in the unincorporated community of about 14,000, shared examples of the electrical problems.

The complaints to the commission, which regulates utilities in Arkansas, came while Entergy was presenting its arguments for a rate increase.

Electricity service in the community has not been reliable for several years, the three said.

There has been a high frequency and duration of power failures in Hot Springs Village in recent years, Shelton told the three-member commission.

"I do not believe Entergy meets any customary and reasonable standard for reliable service," Shelton said.

Most residents in the village have all-electric homes; natural gas is not available, Shelton said.

In recent years, there have been frequent power failures lasting from a few hours to several days, Shelton said.

It's reasonable to lose power during extreme events, such as a tornado or heavy snow, which have happened in the past five years, or because of a vehicle accident, Shelton said.

But for other failures, Entergy's excuses include that the electric infrastructure in the community is old and outdated, some underground circuits need replacing and the village is heavily forested, Shelton said.

"I do not believe these are legitimate excuses for unreliable service," Shelton said. "Nor do I believe commission rules allow a sliding scale of reliability standards for these reasons."

Purchasing a dedicated backup generator for Hot Springs Village is not a viable option, Dollar said.

"This corridor in its current condition requires additional focus to fulfill reasonable business-service expectations," Dollar said.

Hebert opened a frozen-yogurt store on Arkansas 7 in 2013. His electric service was very bad, Hebert told the commission.

"If I had known how bad it was, I would never have opened the business," said Hebert, who spent much of his life in Arizona and California before moving to Hot Springs Village.

He said the business lost power dozens of times, from short brownouts, which knocked out his yogurt machines, to whole days in the dark, Hebert said.

"I suffered substantial losses to my personal wealth," Hebert said. "I cannot blame that on Entergy. But there was well over $10,000 that I can blame on them because of a loss of energy service to my store, which caused a loss of perishable items and a loss of revenue because I had nothing to sell. And extra labor I had to bring in to get us back online once the power came back up."

Hebert eventually closed the business -- not because of problems with the power -- but because he was unable to make enough of a profit, he said.

The negative comments about Entergy Arkansas' reliability "pains me," Hugh McDonald, Entergy Arkansas' chief executive officer, told the commission.

"It's unacceptable," McDonald said.

The company, which has about 6,000 customers in the village, has been aware of problems there, said McDonald, who will retire later this year.

"There has been a concerted effort with regards to our engineering team, our field operations team, to invest in additional infrastructure projects to fix the problem," McDonald said. "We're not there yet."

At least part of the problem is electrical cable that was buried during installation 25 or 30 years ago. That makes it "infinitely more difficult to replace," said Rick Riley, who has been named to replace McDonald as chief executive officer.

The type of cable installed in Hot Springs Village tends to degrade over time, Riley told the three Hot Springs Village residents at a break in the commission's hearing last month.

Traditionally, the cable would be expected to last 35 to 40 years, said Riley, who is an electrical engineer.

Entergy has replaced some of the cable recently with a newer and better cable, Riley said.

Hebert, whose business was in Garland County, did not have similar electrical trouble at his home, which is in the Saline County side of Hot Springs Village.

First Electric Cooperative provides electricity to almost 4,000 customers in Hot Springs Village in Saline County.

Tonya Sexton, spokesman for First Electric, declined to address Entergy's service methods.

First Electric takes a proactive approach to maintain the electric system in the 17 counties it serves in central and southeast Arkansas, Sexton said.

"This includes routine maintenance on equipment and lines as well as a concerted effort to keep vegetation out of our right of way," Sexton said. "These steps both help minimize outages and speed restoration times during outages."

First Electric uses both overhead and underground lines in Hot Springs Village, Sexton said. The main lines going into the village are overhead and underground lines are used in the subdivisions, she said.

Entergy has identified the problem areas in Hot Springs Village and work has started to address them, said Sally Graham, a company spokesman.

Riley will meet with residents in April to review the $563,000 work plan for this year, Graham said.

At the hearing, when told that about $600,000 would be invested to fix the problems, Hebert said, "You're going to be several million dollars behind the eight-ball."

Entergy Arkansas has 71 miles of overhead power lines and 350 miles of underground cable in Hot Springs Village, Graham said.

"While there have been some underground issues, the majority of outages in Hot Springs Village are related to overhead facilities due to the heavy vegetation in this community," Graham said in a statement. "For example, when a tree falls from outside our right of way, it's not uncommon for it to damage two or three poles that must be replaced."

The commission gets thousands of calls annually about customers' bills and other issues, said John Bethel, executive director of the commission's general staff. Five or six a year turn into formal complaints that become cases heard at the commission's Little Rock office.

The commission works with a utility when there are complaints made about service, Bethel said.

The commission follows up on complaints to be sure the utility has identified the root problem and what is being done to address it, Bethel said.

"We have received calls in our consumer services section about the service in Hot Springs Village from time to time," Bethel said. "We have worked with [Entergy] to resolve those. There are some that may take larger actions by the utility. Entergy is taking steps to address those."

SundayMonday Business on 02/14/2016

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