The Council convened on December 16, 2025, to approve Resolution R2569 establishing New Orleans' first Distributed Energy Resources (DER) program. This landmark initiative, born from post-Hurricane Ida resilience efforts, aims to invest $28 million over three years to deploy solar and battery systems across the city. The program seeks to provide backup power during outages and enhance grid reliability while capping administration costs and mitigating bill impacts for customers.
Hey everyone, thank you for your patience. We're just waiting for a quorum. We have council members on their way right now, so we'll start shortly, okay? Thank you. All right, everyone. We have a quorum now, so let's go ahead and get started. Aaron, when you get settled, if you can start with roll call, please. Good morning, Councilmember. Good morning. Councilmember Thomas present. Councilmember Morel present. Council Member Moreno present. We have a quorum. All right, thank you, Aaron. Um, let me start with the approval of the minutes. I'll make a motion to approve the minutes. Seconded by President Morel. All in favor. I the minutes are approved. All right, let me take item number three at the Distributed Energy Resources Program resolution. I'm gonna make a quick statement before this, and then Aaron, I know you also have a presentation to take us through uh as well for the public. So today's a big day. Today, after many months of work with advocates, our CURO office, of course, uh other stakeholders as well. We are announcing the beginning of New Orleans' first energy providing for homes and businesses. This establishes a third program that will place hundreds of across New Orleans to increase sustainability and reliability. The program has two main benefits. First, it provides a backup source for when power goes out to protect and then second, and this is a piece that we've talked about, it creates this is that peaked controlled or high extra creation power. What we're doing today is actually really it is the largest single and sustainability in New Orleans, and we haven't found any other anything to tell us differently. So also the largest like this per capita in the country. A little bit of how we got it was after Hurricane Ida that we committed to strengthen our power grid to better withstand storms. We began with the resiliency docket for energy to strengthen our power through that millions of dollars worth of investments and mitigated cost to ratepayers by using grants and also credits. Also program, combining solar and batteries for churches and other centers across the city to be able to be powered so that we could assist different neighborhoods and be a resource even when the power goes out. We've worked hard to find solutions on ensuring one committed to doing things differently after Hurricane Ida to fixing our grid and redefining reliable electricity through investments not just in poles and wires but in our community. Today's investment in nearly 30 million dollars in community-centric sustainability will save customers sturdy during outages, storms, and crisis. Over the next several years, the DER program will help families and small businesses and institutions secure long-term suspend sustainability while building a stronger, more resilient grid. What is happening today is groundbreaking and recognizes that the modern grid it has changed, and that we must change as regulators and leaders to adopt new technologies and strategies on cost for the people of so with that and Aaron, I'm gonna I've almost called you Energy. Um over to you. Thank you for a presentation for us, um, and also for uh walking the public through exactly what DER is here. Council member, and our last meeting together as a group. Uh and so I just want to acknowledge all of the hard work that you have done. I mean, we started same day seven and a half years ago, and so thank you for your support. Some of whom Byron, Bobby, Candy, Phony. Um, we went to people and we're thinking see from how more involved and how much more approachable this whole area of utility regulation of this council and thank you for your leadership. Uh thank you all for your support. And with that, we're gonna need so what is this a very simple definition, but it's an integrated system of power production, distribution, and storage that allows utilities, regulators, and customers to reduce demand on the grid, provide power during outages, and enhance grow grid resilience. Council member, as you stated, this docket actually started as part of the resilience conversation after Hurricane Ida. It's it came up again when we experienced the forced outage from MISO in May of this year, and it just shows how vulnerable we are, but also how resilient we can be. So this docket, and I don't know that these bullets even do justice to the amount of time and effort that stakeholders, the advisors, our office, you all have put into this. But over the last 14 months, we have had comments, reply comments, proposals, revised proposals, technical conferences, second technical conferences, all to get where we are today. And in that process, we selected a set of experts, our DER advisors who are going to come on board and really ensure that we can shepherd this program to its fullest potential.