Entergy Arkansas submitted grant applications for the two projects through the DOE’s Grid Deployment Office grant program. The program pays for 30% of the costs of capital improvement projects with the goals of maintaining and enhancing existing hydroelectric facilities. The projects will help ensure Entergy Arkansas can continue generating clean electricity at the dams for years to come.

“Hydroelectricity is the largest supplier of renewable energy in power generation, and many of the assets across the industry are aging facilities,” said Braxton Bennett, senior plant manager for Entergy Arkansas. “Investing in the Remmel and Carpenter dams provides multiple benefits for Entergy and our customers. As safety is a top priority, these capital investments allow us to increase the reliability of our equipment used for generation and lake level control to ensure the public remains safe from the threats of flood conditions and allows for the continuous recreational use of Lake Hamilton and Lake Catherine. They also allow for operations personnel to respond to grid conditions in a more agile manner with updated technology.”

The Carpenter-Remmel Grid Resiliency Project was awarded $978,138 to upgrade the control valves in both the Carpenter and Remmel facilities, upgrade and replace the Carpenter Dam’s programmable logic controller human machine interface system with an advanced control technology, and to collocate the Carpenter and Remmel facilities control system to an offsite location. Benefits of the project include the ability to start/stop the turbine units remotely, with little to no ramp up time, which will increase Carpenter-Remmel’s available power generation.

The Remmel Dam Safety Project was also awarded $1,877,216 to proactively improve safety at the Remmel Dam facility, including some concrete repair on the dam gate decks and installing a new remotely operated gate hoist. Being able to remotely operate the gate improves the operator’s ability to safely maintain water levels, adjust to changing river flows, and intervene during a major storm event — all of which help ensure the safe operation of the dam even in extreme weather conditions. This year marks the 100^th anniversary of Remmel Dam providing safe, reliable power to customers.

Funding for the projects comes from the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and is part of the first round of grants awarded to nearly three hundred hydroelectric improvement projects. Work on both projects is expected to begin later this year and expected to be complete within three years. Ěý

These grants from the DOE are part of Entergy’s larger strategy to pursue state federal and state funding opportunity available to Entergy and our partners to support maintaining and improving the electrical infrastructure in our service areas.

“Receiving funding for large infrastructure projects helps reduce costs for customers,” said Laura Landreaux, president and CEO of Entergy Arkansas. “This also allows Entergy to redeploy our capital dollars toward more projects across Entergy Arkansas so we can keep our electrical grid resilient and safe while providing additional value to our customers.”

Entergy Arkansas also has a grant application under consideration with DOE for funding for resilience and hardening projects through their competitive — in 2023, another Entergy operating company, Entergy New Orleans, was awarded $55 million in matching federal funds through the GRIP grant program. Entergy Arkansas is also awaiting the results of three applications to the program, which was funded through the BIL’s 40101(d) state . Both programs are expected to announce awardees this fall.

Our efforts to ensure that our communities receive a fair share of federal funding don’t stop with the programs for which Entergy is eligible as the direct recipient — we also work with external stakeholders to help them access funding opportunities beyond Entergy’s scope, such as the DOE’s for state governments andĚýĚýprogram for HBCUs.

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. – If it weren’t for construction of Remmel and Carpenter dams a century ago, some of the state’s greatest recreation areas may not exist. As Remmel Dam marks its 100^th anniversary, community and company leaders gathered at Lake Catherine to celebrate the decades of reliable, clean energy the dam provides.

Constructed and first brought online by Arkansas Power and Light Company in 1924, Remmel Dam is located on the Ouachita River near Jones Mills in Hot Spring County. Together with Carpenter Dam in Hot Springs, they provide hydroelectric power for the natural state and form lakes Catherine and Hamilton

”Remmel Dam is an essential part of Entergy Arkansas’ diverse fuel mix portfolio,” said William Cunningham, director of resource planning for Entergy Arkansas. “Harnessing the hydroelectric power enhances our clean energy offerings and positions us well for future power generation needs.”

Senior leadership from Entergy Arkansas, Entergy Power Generation, family members of AP&L founder Harvey Couch and current employees working at Remmel Dam gathered with state and local officials and members of the community to celebrate the dam’s centennial anniversary this morning at the dam site in Malvern. Festivities included a dedication recognizing Remmel Dam’s place in Arkansas and Entergy history, guided tours of the dam site and a pop-up museum of artifacts, information and photos.

Tours of Remmel Dam will be given to Entergy Arkansas employees and retirees throughout this week, and area schools have scheduled tours the last week in April. The dam will be open to the public for guided tours June 10-13. Visitors should wear closed toed shoes if they are interested in visiting the dam up close.

Couch founded AP&L in 1913. Three years later, he was approached by Flave Carpenter about building dams on the Ouachita River to harness hydroelectric power.

Remmel Dam was one of the first major sources of power generation for AP&L. It was the third generation site built by Harvey Couch and the only one still operating today, with many original parts, in service for Entergy. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1992. The lake and surrounding area created by Remmel Dam has been a great source of tourism and economic development for the state.

Remmel Dam is named after Colonel Harmon L. Remmel, a friend of Harvey Couch who helped facilitate meetings in Washington D.C. for Couch to obtain licensing and permission to build the dam. Construction on the dam began in May 1923 and was completed in December 1924 at a total cost of $2,142,000.

“The benefits that Remmel Dam has brought to the Malvern and Hot Springs area are numerous,” said Kimberly Bogart, lakes manager for Carpenter and Remmel Dams. “The dams were originally intended to help bring reliable low-cost electrical power to the state, but now also serve multiple purposes including fisheries and especially recreation/tourism. Hot Springs is the number one tourist destination in the state of Arkansas and one of the major draws is the area lakes, which all started with Remmel Dam and Lake Catherine.

Today, power from Remmel Dam services not only Entergy Arkansas, but is also interconnected to the Entergy power grid. Entergy Arkansas plans to continue maximizing the dam’s ability to provide safe and reliable hydroelectric power to the state of Arkansas for the next century.

“With one hundred years in service, the dam boasts a legacy of rich history and community partnership,” said Bogart. We are looking forward to building on this legacy and continuing to be a valued resource for Entergy Arkansas and the state for years to come.”

About Entergy Arkansas

Entergy Arkansas, LLC provides electricity to approximately 730,000 customers in 63 counties. Entergy Arkansas is a subsidiary of şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř, a Fortune 500 electric company. Entergy powers life for 3 million customers through our operating companies in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas. We’re investing in the reliability and resilience of the energy system while helping our region transition to cleaner, more efficient energy solutions. With roots in our communities for more than 100 years, Entergy is a nationally recognized leader in sustainability and corporate citizenship. Since 2018, we have delivered more than $100 million in economic benefits each year to local communities through philanthropy, volunteerism and advocacy. Entergy is headquartered in New Orleans, Louisiana, and has approximately 12,000 employees. For the latest news from Entergy Arkansas, visit the and connect with @EntergyArk on social media.

A little more than 10 years later, Mr. Couch’s Sterlington natural gas-powered plant in north Louisiana was placed online in November 1925. As the demand for electricity grew, so did the company’s fleet of power generation resources. Couch built Remmel Dam, the first hydroelectric dam on the Ouachita River, near Hot Springs in 1924. Just upstream in 1931 came Carpenter Dam, and both dams still generate emission-free power today.

Interesting bit of company trivia: Carpenter Dam is named for Flavius (Flave) Josephus Carpenter, a lawman and former riverboat captain who knew the terrain and river well and helped Couch choose the sites for the dams. Carpenter’s great grandson, Flave Carpenter, shown here holding an original model of the dam, is a customer service manager for Entergy Arkansas in Searcy.

As technology improved and demand grew, Entergy continued to diversify fuel sources, adding several oil-burning generating stations. Today, oil is obsolete as a power generating fuel, but natural gas is still very much a part of the mix. About 17% of power for Entergy Arkansas customers is generated with natural gas including plants near El Dorado, Malvern, and Redfield.

By the early 1970s, Arkansas Power & Light made a bold move toward a cleaner future with the construction of Arkansas Nuclear One. Unit 1 went online in 1974, and Unit 2 in 1978. ANO has been generating electricity virtually emission-free for nearly 50 years now.

Between ANO and power sourced from the Grand Gulf nuclear facility in Mississippi, approximately 72% of the power delivered to Entergy Arkansas customers is from nuclear sources.

The White Bluff and Newark coal plants were brought online in the 1980s, though they are scheduled to be decommissioned by 2028 and 2030.

More recently, the Stuttgart Solar şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř Center has been producing 81 megawatts of solar energy since 2018, and the Chicot Solar şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř Center has been producing 100 megawatts of power since it came online in the fall of 2020. Construction of the Searcy Solar power generating plant is underway, so when the facility comes online by the end of this year, 100 megawatts of emission-free power will begin flowing onto the Entergy Arkansas electric grid.

Though company founder Harvey Couch died in 1941, his legacy lives on – providing Arkansans with reliable electricity at an affordable price.Ěý

Entergy Arkansas cares about your safety. Besides looking out for storm debris, follow some basic water safety tips from Entergy’s website:

/operations_information/hydro/public_safety/

Whether you’re on an Entergy lake or water anywhere else, please keep these safety tips in mind:

Boating

• Obey all boating laws.
• Reduce your boat’s speed in congested areas.
• Hypothermia Kills – Dress properly and always wear a life jacket.
• Beware of shallow areas, underwater obstructions and floating debris when boating.
• Exercise extreme caution when operating sailboats in the vicinity of overhead utility lines.
• Obey the Rules of the Road when boating.
• Alcohol mixed with boating can be lethal.
• Children 12 years & younger must wear a US Coast Guard-approved Life Jacket.
• State law requires you to slow down to 5-mph when within 100 feet of all docks, swimmers, bridges and anchored boats. Turn on your navigational lights at night.
• Water levels above and below the dams are subject to fluctuations without warning; obey all warning signs and sirens.

Skiing

• Skiing is dangerous for non-swimmers.
• Always wear an approved life jacket.
• Stay in open water and watch for swimmers.
• Always have an observer on board.
• Swimming
• Check the water depth before you dive.
• Swim with others – not by yourself.
• Avoid the regular boat channels, launching ramps and docks.
• Swim, dive and wade where you are familiar with the water depth & the bottom.Ěý
• Life jackets, they float — you don’t.
• Watch Children closely.
• Know your abilities because water distances are deceiving.
• Never rely on toys such as inner tubes and water wings to stay afloat.

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The way these typically work, scammers direct the customer to transfer funds electronically, sometimes through money wiring systems or pre-paid cards. In some instances, callers have demanded immediate payment over the phone. The callers often use sophisticated spoofing technology to replicate the local utility’s name and number on the customer’s caller ID box, making it particularly difficult for the customer to spot this scam.

THIS IS NOT ENTERGY. NO UTILITY DOES BUSINESS THIS WAY.

If a customer gets a call like this, they should hang up immediately. If they have questions about their account, please call 1.800.ENTERGY.

How can a customer safely pay a bill?

Customers should only use authorized methods and legitimate banking information to pay your Entergy bill.

• Pay online –Ěý. For no additional charge, conveniently pay your bill online by electronic check. Log in securely toĚýĚýto view and pay your bills.
• Pay by phone – Pay your bill by credit card, debit card or electronic check by calling 1-800-584-1241. BillMatrix, our pay-by-phone provider, will charge a $2.95 service fee. BillMatrix is the only authorized credit card vendor authorized to process these types of payments.
• Auto pay bank draft – Automatically deduct your bill payment from your checking account each month. We’ll mail a monthly billing statement to you for your records, showing the bill amount and bank draft date.
• Pay by mail – Send check by U.S. mail to the remittance address shown on your bill.

If you believe you are a victim of this scam, you should notify the proper authorities, such as the local police or the state attorney general’s office. If you believe your Entergy account has been affected, call 1-800-ENTERGY (1 800 368 3749) to speak with an Entergy customer service representative. For more information: /scams

Entergy Arkansas provides electricity to approximately 700,000 customers in 63 counties. şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř is an integrated energy company engaged primarily in electric power production and retail distribution operations. Entergy owns and operates power plants with approximately 30,000 megawatts of electric generating capacity, including nearly 9,000 megawatts of nuclear power. Entergy delivers electricity to 2.9 million utility customers in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas. Entergy has annual revenues of approximately $11 billion and more than 13,000 employees.

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Huffman and Heard, who both work in hydro operations as maintenance operators, were completing their rounds at Carpenter Dam at 10:20 p.m. when Huffman noticed a woman in distress on her phone in a parking area below the dam. He stopped to see if he could help and found a man in a pickup sweating and saying his head was hurting. Huffman took over the panicking woman’s phone conversation and provided useful information to the 911 operator as he signaled to Heard to join him. When Heard arrived a moment later, the man was unconscious.

While most Entergy operations employees are trained in first aid and CPR, Heard happens to be a certified respiratory therapist, a carry-over from a previous career before he joined Entergy two years ago. No stranger to medical emergencies, Huffman immediately checked for a pulse and did not find one. He and Heard moved the man from the pickup to the ground and began chest compressions in the rain. About five minutes later a police officer arrived, then an ambulance a few minutes after that.

“I told them how proud I was, and that Lake Catherine was fortunate to have them working for us,” said the men’s supervisor, Nathan Goodman, Lake Catherine plant supervisor. “You never know when you’re going to be faced with an emergency. It’s good for our employees and our customers that Entergy emphasizes being prepared.”

DuringĚý, we’re recognizing the efforts and commitment of safety and health professionals whose contributions each day engage co-workers in safe practices and work to include safety in the very design of each work activity.

The five-year contract calls for Entergy Louisiana to purchase up to 43 megawatts of the power generated by the 80-MW hydro plant, which is owned by the Sabine River authorities of Louisiana and Texas. Two other Louisiana utilities will share the remainder of the plant’s output. The new power purchase agreement replaces a 50-year contract that expired earlier this year.

The Louisiana Public Service Commission approved the agreement at its Oct. 26 meeting.

“The commission’s decision means Toledo Bend will remain a valuable part of our renewable energy portfolio,” said Phillip May, president and CEO of Entergy Louisiana. “It is another step in meeting our commitment to provide clean, affordable and reliable power so our communities can prosper.”

The power from the Toledo Bend facility is part of Entergy Louisiana’s 180 megawatts of renewable resources, which also includes run-of-river hydro, biomass and waste heat recovery.

“We are working to expand our renewable portfolio with a proposal currently pending with regulators to purchase the output of a planned 50-MW solar facility in West Baton Rouge Parish. We hope to receive regulatory approval for that in the near future,” May said.

Entergy Louisiana’s portfolio already includes the state’s two largest sources of emission-free energy – Waterford 3 and River Bend nuclear units.

Toledo Bend is one of the largest manmade reservoirs in the nation.

Entergy Louisiana, LLC provides electric service to more than 1 million customers and natural gas service to nearly 93,000 customers in the greater Baton Rouge area. With operations in southern, central and northeastern Louisiana, the company is a subsidiary of şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř.

Here’s a look behind the scenes at what it means to manage the lakes. There’s more to it than one might think.

Managing the lakes is a constant balancing act with multiple variables. It’s all about the water. When weather forecasters predict heavy rains, we must estimate how much will fall in our watershed and prepare accordingly by lowering levels to mitigate flash flooding. When a dam upstream releases water, usually we’ll adjust a dam downstream match it to maintain the level — or not and raise the level. All the lakes have overall target levels and daily fluctuation ranges.

Then there’s the reason the dams were built in the first place:Ěýlakes Hamilton and Catherine were created for hydroelectric power generation.

There are three dams on the Ouachita River for which Entergy manages the generation: Blakely, Carpenter and Remmel. Entergy owns Carpenter and Remmel, and we have a contract for the power generation from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Blakely Dam. Our balancing act involves interactions between these three dams and the three lakes they create, as well as the river that runs through it all.

We generate hydroelectric power to obtain the lowest-price electricity available for Entergy customers. To be able to do this, the lake levels have to fluctuate more during those peak electrical demand periods like we are now experiencing. Generation is timed to match peak demand, which is typically during the hottest part of the day. These past several days (mid-July), the weather has been very hot, and demand for electricity has been very high. As a result, the system has called upon the dams for maximum generation in the afternoons.

Target levels are dictated by a license issued to Entergy Arkansas by the Federal şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř Regulatory Commission to operates the lakes and the dams. The license specifies that Lake Hamilton should Ěýfluctuate by no more than one foot daily. Lake Catherine’s range is two feet daily. We try not to change the level of either of the lakes that much, but when demand for power is especially high, we tend to generate more. In the last few days, the level of Lake Hamilton has dropped a few inches below its normal summertime target level but well within its operating range. Lake Catherine, as well, has stayed within its normal operating range.

We are constantly working to balance the interests of those enjoying living and playing on the lakes with the need to generate power, all while doing what we can to keep levels manageable.
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