New Orleans Sewerage and Water Board power complex faces delays

Catch up quick: SWBNO officials have said they expect this year's infrastructure updates to be "transformational" as they juice up the more-than-century-old system that New Orleans relies on for its drinking water and keeping the streets dry.

• The power complex is a key part of those plans.

How it works: The pumps that move water through New Orleans are so old that they rely on power produced at a lower frequency than Entergy provides.

• That has left SWBNO to produce its own power on equipment that is also old and increasingly unreliable.
• The new power complex at the Carrollton plant will allow SWBNO to plug into Entergy's power and convert it onsite instead.

Timeline: The equipment that will allow that conversion is called frequency changers, and the new complex will have three of them.

• The first, originally planned to come online for testing in July, will now be available in August, SWBNO says, with a goal to get it in service the same month.

• SWBNO plans to get the second and third frequency changers online in October.
• A new power turbine, Turbine 7, is slated for use in November.

Between the lines: The new equipment requires "several weeks of robust testing and commissioning before we fully transition over to this new power source," said SWBNO interim executive director M. Ron Spooner in a press release.

What we're watching: SWBNO officials will appear before City Council on Thursday to offer a full update on the construction.

Go deeper: See SWBNO's current pumping and power capacity