POWER May 2023 - 20

UTILITY SPOTLIGHT
Enduring Value: Entergy's More
Than 100-Year-Old Story
One man's ambition to electrify the Middle South and improve its economic outlook
110 years ago evolved from a handshake for steam from a boiler powered with waste
sawdust into Entergy Corp., a multi-billion-dollar energy giant. Shaped by a legacy of
growth, innovation, hardship, and disaster, the company today forms a bedrock in the
Gulf Coast, America's new economic powerhouse.
Sonal Patel
E
choing the geneses of most utilities
in the U.S., Entergy's founding
began with ambition. On Nov. 13,
1913, a 36-year-old entrepreneur, Harvey
Couch, established Arkansas Power and
Light (AP&L) with a vision to build an interconnected
utility network that could
bring affordable and reliable power to the
Middle South. In sharp contrast with the
founders of other utility giants, however,
Couch's intent was shaped by extraordinarily
humble beginnings. " It's a classic
Horatio Alger story that sounds too
good to be true: poorly educated farmboy-turned-mail-clerk
strikes out to start
an innovative company in a fledgling industry
and ends up becoming one of the
most influential men of his time, " notes
corporate historian Heidi Tyline King in
the 2013-published commemorative history
book We Power Life: Entergy's First
Century. But " that's exactly what Harvey
Couch did, " she writes.
Couch's beginnings were bleak. One
of six children, he grew up working on
a 130-acre farm in Calhoun, Arkansas,
a rural town stricken by severe poverty,
subsisting on what his family raised,
and attending school only long enough
to learn the basics of reading and writing.
At age 17, when the farm failed, his
family moved to Magnolia, Arkansas,
and though Couch briefly re-enrolled in
school, he quit for good to support his
family through a series of odd jobs.
But Couch's ambitions, driven by curiosity,
began to take seed when he saw
construction workers raising poles for
telephone wires. At age 27, armed with a
" slow-talking style " and a reputation for
honesty and hard work, he used savings
of $156 to sell coupon books to customers
for telephone service, King writes.
Using mules and a crew, he established
a telephone connection between Bienville
and McNeil, Arkansas. Seven years
later, that enterprise had expanded into
20
1. One of the first generating ventures developed
by Arkansas Power and Light, an
Entergy predecessor, in 1914 comprised two
550-kW generators sited at a lumber yard in
Arkansas. Courtesy: Entergy
1,500 miles. In 1911, he sold it to Southwestern
Bell for more than $1 million in
profit. He then invested the earnings in
two failed electric power franchises with
intent to establish an interconnected utility
network. Under his newly founded
venture, Arkansas Power and Light Co.,
his first deal was to purchase steam
from a sawdust-powered boiler from Arkansas
Land and Lumber Co., a lumber
yard owned by H. H. Foster.
A rapid expansion swiftly followed,
first with a dedicated facility next to the
lumber yard's boiler room that housed
two 550-kW generators (Figure 1), and
then for a central generating station in
Russellville, which connected to the original
system via an 83,000-volt transmission
line. Before World War I stymied his
progress, Couch's company had acquired
six more franchises.
Decades of Expansion
The early 1920s brought more opportunities
for growth. Furnished with financing
from New York investors, Couch in
1922 incorporated New Orleans Public
Service Inc. (NOPSI) and the Mississippi
Power and Light Co. (MP&L) in 1923. In
www.powermag.com
1924, he completed the 9.3-MW Remmel
Dam in Hot Spring County, Arkansas.
The iconic hydroelectric station on
the Ouachita River cost about $2.2 million.
That same year, Couch established
Louisiana Power and Light Co. (LP&L) to
finance and build the 30-MW Sterlington
Generating Station near the center of a
newly discovered natural gas field (then
the largest in the world). Two additional
turbo-generators, each with a capacity of
30 MW, were later placed in service in
1928 and 1929, making the Sterlington
station one of the largest power plants
in the South.
In 1925, to raise more capital and
address growing competition, Couch
merged his businesses with the Electric
Bond and Share Co. (EBASCO),
a General Electric subsidiary, forming
the Electric Power and Light Corp.
(EP&L). However, in 1935, the federal
Public Utility Hold Company Act forced
EBASCO and EP&L to break up the multilevel
holding. The ordeal of reorganization
was amplified by Couch's death in
1941 of cardiac complications at age
64. EBASCO's break up was eventually
finalized in 1949, and Couch's system of
companies-AP&L, MP&L, LP&L, and
EP&L-reorganized as Middle South
Utilities. With Edgar Dixon as its first
CEO-and its headquarters in New
York-Middle South began trading on
the New York Stock Exchange in 1949.
Riding on the post-war boom in the
1950s and 1960s, Middle South, like
other U.S. utilities, embarked on a power
plant building spree to keep step with
soaring power demand. Middle South
put online installations like Ninemile
Point, a dual-fuel boiler plant, and Little
Gypsy, the world's first fully automated
generating unit. The 1970s, however,
presented new complexities. While still
buoyant on a massive expansion plan,
Middle South's plans for conventional
generation began to crumble as environPOWER
| May 2023
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POWER May 2023

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