Council Meeting December 16, 2025: Distributed Energy Resources Resolution
Council Meeting December 16, 2025: Distributed Energy Resources Resolution
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.
Consent Calendar
- Approval of the previous meeting's minutes was moved and seconded, with unanimous approval.
Public Comments & Testimony
- Rebecca Merriweather (Magic Stream Community): Expressed strong support for the program, noting its potential to serve the entire neighborhood and improve livability; emphasized that distributed panels could be a matter of life and death for residents.
- Sarah Jane Gidry: Expressed concerns regarding eligibility and fairness; stated she is not eligible for the Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) incentives and questioned the fairness of the compensation rate paid to customers for energy pulled from their systems.
- Crack at FQA / Community Lighthouse Representative: Stated strong support, arguing that the grid failure previously caused the loss of a community shelter during Hurricane Ida due to lack of ventilation. Urged the Council to protect neighbors and prevent future families from enduring similar crises.
- Matt Handler (Bethlehem Care): Stated full support for the initiative, highlighting the critical need for power in food desert communities served by the church; shared personal experience of food spoilage during a local outage in Algiers, District C, without a storm.
- Parent & Community Lighthouse Tech Lead: Expressed support for scaling the program to allow families to join the green workforce and reduce energy bills to approximately $10 per year.
- International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 130: Expressed support for the proposal but urged that the design include a robust apprenticeship program to provide employment opportunities for local workers.
- Natalie Geordy (Hotel GM during Hurricane Ida): Expressed strong support, describing microgrids as life-saving infrastructure that builds resilience and grid stability simultaneously.
- Councilmember Electric Domingue (Climate Committee Chair): Expressed support for the transformative nature of the decision and thanked outgoing leaders for moving the initiative forward.
- Sean (Community Advocate): Expressed strong support for the shift toward local neighborhood energy solutions, citing the need to stop relying on remote power sources and to unite the community through local generation.
- Logan Burke (Affordable Energy): Expressed support for the resolution, noting it appropriately balances the unique needs of different neighborhoods in New Orleans.
- Jeff Canton (Solar Alternatives): Expressed support for the program's ability to address climate change and grid effects, highlighting that the most impacted communities are often the lowest income.
- Local Homeowner: Expressed support for adding batteries to 15,000 homes like theirs to create community support pockets; emphasized the program is about saving lives, not just energy.
- Manufacturers and VCs Representative: Expressed support, stating the decision signals New Orleans is open for business and provides marketplace certainty for investors.
- Dominic Trainer (Schneider Electric): Expressed strong support, framing electrical energy as a human right and promising local partner support for implementation.
- Greater New Orleans Interfaith Climate Coalition (Online Comment): Stated strong support for the resolution, emphasizing the critical need for resources to share power during emergencies.
- Brad Ott (Online Comment): Expressed support for neighborhood power solutions to mitigate outages.
- Ben Quimby (Online Comment): Expressed support specifically for the components addressing health department needs.
- Jesse George (Alliance for Affordable Energy): Expressed support but advocated for implementation evaluation metrics and reporting requirements to apply to all resilience projects receiving ratepayer or taxpayer funding.
- Councilmember Addressing Legislature: Urged the Council to protect city energy policy from state legislators in the upcoming session to ensure progressive renewable resources are maintained.
Discussion Items
- Resolution R2569 (DER Program):
- Council President & Mayor's Office: Described the program as the largest single sustainability investment per capita in the country. Explained it combines solar and batteries for churches and community centers to provide backup power and peak-controlled generation. Stated the investment is nearly $30 million (noting a discrepancy with the speaker's later $28 million figure) and was designed to mitigate costs to ratepayers through grants and credits following Hurricane Ida and the May MISO outage.
- Council Chair (Outgoing): Acknowledged the 7.5-year timeline starting from the resilience docket after Hurricane Ida. Outlined the financials: $28 million over three years for upfront incentives, capped year-over-year for residential and commercial customers, with a requirement for customers to be locked in for seven years. Noted administration costs are capped at $2 million and the program remains vendor-neutral.
- Implementation Details: Discussed the requirement for an implementation plan by March 1st involving utility, regulators, and stakeholders. Emphasized the role of the new DER advisors and the Energy Smart program in administration.
Key Outcomes
- Vote on Resolution R2569: The resolution was approved. Council members moved, seconded, and voted in favor. Councilmember Harris was present and in support of the DER docket. There was no opposition recorded.
- Directives & Next Steps:
- The City will implement the program through the Energy Smart program.
- An implementation plan is required to be presented by stakeholders by March 1st.
- The Council agreed to advocate against state legislative efforts that might dilute the city's renewable resource goals.
- Adjournment: The meeting was adjourned following the vote on the resolution.
Meeting Transcript
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.
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