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The story
Entergy traces its history to November 13, 1913, with the formation of Arkansas Power Company. Founder Harvey C. Couch used sawdust from a lumber company to bring electricity to rural Arkansas. In the 1920s, Couch set his sights on buying electric companies in other states. In 1923, he merged four independent companies in Mississippi into Mississippi Power and Light. Two years later, he formed Louisiana Power and Light to provide power to his Mississippi customers from northern Louisiana's natural gas fields.
Meanwhile, in 1922, the Electric Bond and Share Company (EBASCO, a subsidiary of General Electric) under Sidney Z. Mitchell merged several competing streetcar and electric utilities into New Orleans Public Service. Mitchell began turning his attention to other territories, and eventually began competing with Couch. The two men ultimately decided to merge their resources. In 1925, Electric Power and Light Corporation was formed, an EBASCO subsidiary headquartered in New Orleans, with Couch as its president. It was the parent company for Mississippi Power and Light, Louisiana Power and Light, New Orleans Public Service, and Arkansas Power and Light.
EBASCO fought the constitutionality of the Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935, losing a Supreme Court case in 1938, and was ordered dissolved under the provisions of that act in 1949. Mississippi Power and Light, Louisiana Power and Light, New Orleans Public Service and Arkansas Power and Light were deemed to be an integrated system, and were reorganized under the control of a new holding company, Middle South Utilities. It changed its name to Entergy in 1989, and merged/bought Gulf States Utilities, based in Beaumont, Texas, as of 12:00 midnight, January 1, 1994.
In the late 1990s, Entergy pursued a strategy of global expansion into unregulated markets, acquiring substantial facilities in Australia, Argentina, and the United Kingdom. Shareholder dissatisfaction with the results of this strategy led to a shakeup of management, culminating with the ouster of longtime CEO Ed Lupberger in 1998. Lupberger was replaced by Wayne Leonard, formerly of Cinergy, who supervised the company's disinvestment from overseas holdings.
Since its inception, Entergy has been headquartered in New Orleans. That city had also been home to Entergy's various corporate predecessors since 1925. After Hurricane Katrina hit the city of New Orleans in August 2005, Entergy temporarily relocated the 1,500 employees and contractors who worked at the headquarters to other cities, including Clinton, Mississippi, Little Rock, Arkansas, and The Woodlands, Texas. In April 2006, the company began moving back into its New Orleans headquarters.
In 2011, Entergy and Coulomb Technologies, an electric vehicle charging station maker, began to donate free electric vehicle charging stations at 16 sites at college campuses in the southern US Its first installation was at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, and is free to use for faculty and students.
In 2013, Entergy joined the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO) as is southern region following an Department of Justice investigation into the company's anti-competitive behavior. By joining MISO rather than the Southwest Power Pool, Entergy's service areas have limited interconnection to the remainder of the transmission organization, which reduces flow of cheaper electricity into the area. With a integrated power utility business model, Entergy makes money by constructing power plants, reducing the company's incentive to build transmission connecting it to other regions. Experts state these capacity contraints result in higher profits for the company at the expense of customers and lower reliability, such as rolling blackouts during Winter Storm Uri in 2021.
From Wikipedia’s article on Entergy, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.7