An Important Message for Customers of Entergy New Orleans, Inc.

March 26, 2009

Entergy New Orleans and New Orleans City Council Agree to Lower Electric Rates
Rate Case Delivers $35 Million Decrease to Electric Customers

New Orleans, La. -- Entergy New Orleans, Inc. and the New Orleans City Council Utility Committee today agreed to lower electric rates by approximately $35 million.

Entergy New Orleans’ rate settlement reflects rate reductions that were achievable because the customer base grew faster than estimates expected following Hurricane Katrina and the fact that the company focused on efficient business management while improving reliability throughout the city and continuing the rebuild of the underground gas system.

The rate plan comes after extensive filed testimony and discovery by the parties including the City of New Orleans advisors and interveners. A comprehensive settlement was achieved as all parties involved focused on providing expedited benefits to our customers.

“This comprehensive settlement provides critically needed rate relief to our customers and adds stability in summer pricing through our hedging plan,” said Rod West, president and chief executive officer of Entergy New Orleans, Inc. “It’s our hope that this rate reduction can help our customers during these tough economic times.”

The electric rate reduction will mean a decrease on an average of 4 percent on the total electric bill for Entergy New Orleans residential customers. A typical electric customer using 1,000 kWh will experience a decrease of approximately $3.82 per month.

Other key components include:

• Funding for Energy Smart, a collaborative initiative aimed at providing needed energy efficiency measures to our citizens;

• Gas hedging to take advantage of low gas prices to create stability of summer power generation costs;

• A future long-term power generation resource from a more efficient power plant to meet future needs;

• More customer friendly and clarity of billing components through a new bill redesign

In addition this settlement provides longer term benefits such as funding needed for energy efficiency and demand side management efforts that benefit all customers in addition to providing options for more efficient future generation for Entergy New Orleans customers.

Entergy New Orleans agreed to facilitate a funding mechanism for the Energy Smart program. The intent of that effort is to make homes in the city more energy efficient and to create “green” jobs. The initiative was championed by Council Utility Committee Chair Shelley Midura and supported in principle by Entergy and advocates throughout the city.

For gas customers, the City Council and Entergy also agreed to a $4.9 million gas base rate increase which means Entergy’s combination gas and electric customers will experience a net $30 million rate decrease. The new rates will allow the company to meet its cost of providing safe and reliable gas service citywide while maintaining a gas system that has about 60 percent of its pre-Katrina customers.

Changes to customer bills are not expected to take effect until the first billing of June 2009.

Entergy New Orleans, Inc. is an electric and gas utility serving Orleans Parish and is a subsidiary of Entergy Corporation. The company provides electricity to more than 141,000 customers and natural gas to more than 92,000 customers in Orleans Parish.

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