Entergy Corporation
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Entergy has three main operating segments: U.S. Utility, Non-Utility Nuclear, and Energy Commodity Services.
- The U.S. Utility segment provides retail electricity services to approximately 2.6 million customers in Arkansas, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas.
- The Non-Utility Nuclear segment operates a total of 10 nuclear power plants in New York (Indian Point Energy Center), Massachusetts (Pilgrim), Vermont (Vermont Yankee), Arkansas (Arkansas Nuclear One), Louisiana (River Bend and Waterford), and Mississippi (Grand Gulf). Entergy Nuclear also provides support services for the Cooper Nuclear Station through 2014. Entergy is the second largest nuclear power generator in the United States after Exelon Corporation.
- Until quite recently, its Energy Commodity Services segment consisted chiefly of its share of a derivatives trading concern, Entergy-Koch, a joint venture co-owned by Koch Energy, Inc., a subsidiary of Koch Industries, Inc., Wichita, Kansas. On November 1, 2004, Entergy and Koch announced that they were selling this venture to Merrill Lynch & Co. Entergy expects to receive its share of the proceeds from this sale (ultimately grossing $1 billion) in a stream of payments continuing through 2006. Entergy's energy commodity segment also includes the Gulf South Pipeline, which is also up for sale.
History
The company was formerly known as Middle South Utilities, Inc. It was using that name when it turned toward coal and nuclear-fired plants in the period 1973-74, the years of the first so-called "oil shock."
MSU adopted the name Entergy in May 1989 at a shareholder's meeting in Natchez, Mississippi. The name is supposed to convey elements of synergy and a break with the connotations of the label "utility," of tradition-bound regulated monopolies. A new corporate logo (seen above) was also adopted. It is said to represent a sun (digitized) rising over the Mississippi River.
Also in 1989, MSU/Entergy wrote off one of the biggest losses ever absorbed by an electricity generating company -- it wrote off $900 million it had invested in a never-completed nuclear power plant known as Grand Gulf 2, as part of a deal that settled litigation surrounding rate collection for its Grand Gulf 1.
In 1993, Entergy absorbed Gulf States Utilities, gaining nearly 600,000 customers.