BATON ROUGE – Gov. John Bel Edwards issued the following statement late Tuesday amid rolling blackouts ordered by the Midcontinent Independent System Operator, or MISO, which is the reliability coordinator for Entergy and other Louisiana electric companies.

Gov. Edwards said:

“This evening, I spoke with Entergy Louisiana’s CEO as the company, and others across our state and region, began rolling outages at the direction of their reliability coordinator, MISO. They assured me this was done as a last resort, in order to prevent more extensive, prolonged power outages in Louisiana that could severely affect the reliability of the power grid. Further, these rolling outages will be done only when necessary, and the aim will always be to minimize the impact to any individual customer or household.

“This is happening tonight across multiple states in the South. Because of extremely cold temperatures over the last several days, the demand for electricity has reached an all-time high. This afternoon I spoke with President Biden about our ongoing challenges in Louisiana because of this severe weather, including my concerns about Louisianans facing power outages in such cold temperatures. We are not the only state where extreme winter weather has taxed electrical and generation systems, and it is our hope that this issue will be resolved quickly and with minimal impact to our people.”