Power Complex
The Power Complex
The Power Complex is a collection of equipment that powers the city’s drainage pumps—and eventually its drinking water pumps. Together with city, state, and federal partners, SWBNO developed this critical energy resource to provide more reliable services during major weather events, giving customers more peace of mind.
Why We Need It
Since New Orleans is shaped like a bowl, our drainage system has to fight an uphill battle—literally—to serve our customers. To push stormwater where it needs to go, we use pumps, and those pumps need power to operate.
SWBNO’s drainage pumps run on two kinds of power: 60-Hz (modern electricity) and 25-Hz (older electricity). Entergy, our local electricity utility, only generates 60-Hz power, so SWBNO needs to create our own 25-Hz power to run our older pumps. The Power Complex is how we will reliably and efficiently convert modern electricity to power our older pumps.
How It Works
The Power Complex includes the following equipment:
A dedicated substation to pull modern 60-Hz electricity directly from Entergy's power grid.
Modern turbine generators (T6 & T7) to produce backup power (60-Hz) in case the Entergy grid goes down.
Static frequency changers to convert the modern power (60-Hz) to the type of electricity our older pumps can use (25-Hz)
Our older power infrastructure, including Turbines 5 and the EMD generators, will function as back-ups to newer turbines within the Power Complex (which are back-ups themselves).
What Areas Will Benefit
Most of our 25-Hz pumps that need the Power Complex to convert energy are in the older parts of the city.
Newer parts of the city, like New Orleans East, have more modern pumps that run on 60-Hz electricity. These newer pumps can be powered by Entergy directly and do not require us to convert power.
Future Improvements
Although the Power Complex is operational, we aim to improve it further, creating even more redundancy and reliability. These upgrades would include:
- A larger electrical switchgear— To permanently power some drinking water pumps from the Entergy substation as well.
- A State-of-the-Art Operations Center— To give our staff better tools and space for managing systems and optimized coordination.
Without these upgrades, we will still have to rely on some aging equipment to provide our services.
To date, SWBNO has received state and federal funding for this project, supplemented by our own bonds and system funds.
Customer safety is our top priority, and this project is critical for the resilience of New Orleans.
