The issue is something called a Direct Transfer Trip, or DTT. It's a high-speed communication system that disconnects a solar installation from the grid almost instantly when something goes wrong — a fault, an outage, anything that could leave a section of the grid energized while lineworkers are trying to fix it. Entergy New Orleans (ENO) requires one when the combined solar capacity at a given substation transformer hits 5 MW or more.
Here's where it gets complicated: 5 MW is also the maximum size of a community solar project under the city's rules. So several projects in the current pipeline have triggered the DTT requirement simply by being the size they're allowed to be. And DTT installation isn't cheap — it adds meaningful cost to development at a stage where margins on these projects are already thin.
What makes the timing particularly awkward is that ENO is actively reviewing whether its DTT standards are correctly calibrated in the first place. The company has brought in a third-party firm to look at the thresholds and recommend adjustments. So developers were sitting with hard deadlines attached to a standard their utility is in the middle of reconsidering. That's not a workable position.
Resolution R-26-109 — sponsored by Councilmembers McCarron, Morrell, Willard, Harris, and Green — extends affected project deadlines from March 13 to April 27 and formally requires ENO to submit updated DTT guidelines to the Council by that same date. ENO says a full update to its interconnection standards will follow by mid-June. For at least one project already in the construction queue, ENO and the developer went through a third-party Risk of Islanding study together and ENO granted a waiver — which suggests there's some flexibility available even before the revised standards land.
The New Orleans community solar pipeline is 60 MW could serve somewhere between 6,000 and 7,800 households when fully built out. Half of that capacity is reserved specifically for low-income projects. The program exists because rooftop solar doesn't work for most New Orleans residents — renters, people in historic homes, households with shaded roofs, families who simply can't front the installation cost. Community solar is the workaround. Anything that adds cost or uncertainty at the development stage has a direct effect on whether these projects actually get built and who ends up with access to the bill credits.
April 27 is the next real checkpoint. That's when the Council expects updated guidance from ENO — and when it will get a clearer picture of how many projects are actually affected and what the revised standards look like. Mid-June is when the full rewrite of ENO's interconnection standards is supposed to be complete.
Until then, the pipeline keeps moving. Just more carefully.
