Aug 12, 2026 · 47 min · 9 segments
For Episode 4 of Barrels to Bytes, Ben Dell, Lloyd Byrne, and John Ordway are joined by Drew Marsh, Chair and Chief Executive Officer of Entergy. The series brings together perspectives from…
Ben DellHost
Lloyd ByrneHost
John OrdwayHostCo-HostHost
Just to put that into perspective, right, when you think about what the biggest data center you're going to have, if you think forward five years or 10 years now in Louisiana, what do you think that's going to be? 10, 15, 20 gigawatts? And how does that compare to total Louisiana demand, residential, industrial?
Yeah, I mean, I think going into this cycle, I think we have about 25 gigawatts of total capacity on our system.
That's gas, nuclear, a little bit of coal, a little bit of solar capacity on our system.
And right now, we have projects that are either under construction or turbines that are reserved that I believe totals up to somewhere in the 22, 23 gigawatt range, just to give you a sense for how much capacity we're talking about now.
A little bit of it is to support other industrial growth, like we're talking about LNG facilities, petrochem facilities, steel mills, that kind of thing.
And then we have about, as John, we were talking about earlier, we have 10 turbines totaling about 7.5 gigawatts, which are uncommitted at this point.
So it's a substantial build-out that we are looking at, and all that would be coming online by 2032, 2033, maybe the very beginning of 2033.
So it's interesting if we go back to, we were talking before about data center demand picking up and you basically had five years of a head start on everyone else.
What does that rolling view look like and how are conversations evolving if you think back a few years and what they look like today and what they could look like a few years from now?
Yeah, well, I mean, I think the conversations today are, you know, the turbine queue is sitting out in that timeframe.
There are turbines that are available earlier on, but they are very, very expensive to get a hold of.
But everybody's, the conversations today are, okay, so I would like to start ramping up much earlier than 2032, 2033.
How can I do that? And so there's a lot of conversations about bridge power and, you know, other things that we could use, other technologies that we could deploy to try and find capacity on the system, either from a generation perspective or a transmission perspective.
But you basically have a five to seven year head starter view on where demand is going to be as you're going through the planning process with your customers at this point in time.
And those are built into our outlooks that those 10 projects at seven and a half gigawatts, it's uncommitted, not yet in our outlooks.
That's available to serve the seven to 12 gigawatts of potential demand from data centers that we're seeing.
Just to put that into perspective, right, when you think about what the biggest data center you're going to have, if you think forward five years or 10 years now in Louisiana, what do you think that's going to be? 10, 15, 20 gigawatts? And how does that compare to total Louisiana demand, residential, industrial?
Yeah, I mean, I think going into this cycle, I think we have about 25 gigawatts of total capacity on our system.
That's gas, nuclear, a little bit of coal, a little bit of solar capacity on our system.
And right now, we have projects that are either under construction or turbines that are reserved that I believe totals up to somewhere in the 22, 23 gigawatt range, just to give you a sense for how much capacity we're talking about now.
A little bit of it is to support other industrial growth, like we're talking about LNG facilities, petrochem facilities, steel mills, that kind of thing.
And then we have about, as John, we were talking about earlier, we have 10 turbines totaling about 7.5 gigawatts, which are uncommitted at this point.
So it's a substantial build-out that we are looking at, and all that would be coming online by 2032, 2033, maybe the very beginning of 2033.
So it's interesting if we go back to, we were talking before about data center demand picking up and you basically had five years of a head start on everyone else.
What does that rolling view look like and how are conversations evolving if you think back a few years and what they look like today and what they could look like a few years from now?
Yeah, well, I mean, I think the conversations today are, you know, the turbine queue is sitting out in that timeframe.
There are turbines that are available earlier on, but they are very, very expensive to get a hold of.
But everybody's, the conversations today are, okay, so I would like to start ramping up much earlier than 2032, 2033.
How can I do that? And so there's a lot of conversations about bridge power and, you know, other things that we could use, other technologies that we could deploy to try and find capacity on the system, either from a generation perspective or a transmission perspective.
But you basically have a five to seven year head starter view on where demand is going to be as you're going through the planning process with your customers at this point in time.
And those are built into our outlooks that those 10 projects at seven and a half gigawatts, it's uncommitted, not yet in our outlooks.
That's available to serve the seven to 12 gigawatts of potential demand from data centers that we're seeing.
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