Jutting from Texas’ Galveston County as a very narrow strip separating Galveston Bay from the Gulf of Mexico, Bolivar Peninsula serves as a magnet for bird watchers, boaters and big fishing. Yet for all that coastal charm, it’s also naturally exposed to the elements — hurricanes and tropical storms, to be precise — that can prey on electric grid assets out in the open.

Entergy Texas, the power provider to more than 524,000 customers in 27 counties, is looking to flip the script on that vulnerability by exemplifying innovative approaches utilities are taking to better fortify key assets from disruptive tidal surges in hurricane-prone areas.

Intent on hardening its infrastructure’s reliability and meet rising demand, Entergy Texas — with the engineering and construction might of global human critical infrastructure leader Black & Veatch — has built two new substations and upgraded three others in a $110-million push to bolster its system on the peninsula, blending new construction with equipment upgrades.

Innovative substation design defends against coastal threats

Reflecting trending design and construction methodologies, the new substations are 20 feet above the sand to safeguard the electrified assets from tidal surges, much like seaside homes on stilts. A “chain wall” of massive, precast horizontal concrete blocks elevates the substation platform, resting on immense concrete pilings spiked 80 feet deep to ward off any shifting and settling on the malleable terrain.

Grid hardening in action: A proven approach

About the time that ground was being broken on modernized and hardened Bolivar Peninsula infrastructure, Entergy already was putting the strategy into play in neighboring Louisiana. On the narrow barrier splotch of land called Grand Isle — elevated just seven feet above the Gulf of Mexico — the utility joined residents and businesses in the summer of 2023 in welcoming the rebuilt Caminada substation that was the first of its kind in Entergy’s system, rising two stories off the ground on a concrete platform much as the new Bolivar Peninsula substations that followed.

That project — Entergy Louisiana’s answer to damage the previous Caminada substation sustained in Hurricane Ida in August 2021 — also included placing large utility poles deep into steel caissons and the undergrounding of roughly eight miles of distribution lines. Portions of the electric system were moved out of hard-to-access locations in a marsh closer to roadways.

Flash forward to the Bolivar Peninsula, where Entergy Texas entrusted Black & Veatch to handle engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) to make the ambitious infrastructure upgrades a reality. It was a first-of-a-kind mission for Black & Veatch, and the Entergy group — serving 3 million customers through its operating companies in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas — had never done a capital project that, in the interest of efficiency and less disruption, combined transmission and distribution work.

Black & Veatch crews leveraged the company’s global leadership in complex infrastructure solutions that, in this instance, involved painstakingly laying out the concrete chain walls, then erecting the platforms and the new 34.5-kilovolt substations on which they would rest. Behemoth concrete pilings driven 80 feet into the ground — the length of a standard tennis court — proved key, even if it didn’t always go as planned: One of the pilings snapped while being placed, prompting workers to resourcefully and proactively pre-drill holes for the later precast pilings.

And let’s not forget those composite poles — put to the test in July 2024, when Hurricane Beryl pounded the peninsula with winds reaching 90 mph. The storm took out 16 wooden poles, but each composite one stood tall and weathered the assault, requiring little to no maintenance from Entergy Texas crews while enabling them to focus instead on power restoration elsewhere.