Lights are back on, but for Entergy workers, restoration from Hurricane Ida is far from complete.

“We are aware of some outages that did occur in southwest Prairieville as well as in Dutchtown. Some of that can be attributed to inclement weather and damages that have followed Hurricane Ida," Entergy spokesperson David Freese said. 

Recent, sporadic power outages have affected residents in East Baton Rouge and Ascension, but Entergy says that is because they have to power down equipment to make necessary repairs.

“The scheduled outages, when they do occur, they’re for the safety of our crews, to de-energize equipment so they can perform the job safely,” Freese said. “We also have reliability work that’s taking place on a number of our feeders across the system. So what we’re doing is we’re setting new poles in the ground, we’re hanging new wire in the air, and we’re incorporating new smart devices in the system.”

Part of where those new smart devices are going is along Highway 74, where many residents have seen those outages. 

“Those smart devices are Trip Savers and a Recloser. What they do is they give the electric system an opportunity to keep the lights on if a temporary fault occurs. For example, that could be a tree limb that impacts a power line,” Freese continued.

To be notified about scheduled power outages in your area, Entergy recommends going to their website and making sure all contact information along with a preferred method of contact is updated.