Drew Marsh
Chair of the Board and Chief Executive Officer at Entergy
Thank you, Bill and good morning, everyone. And thank you all for joining us on this busy earnings call day. In June, we hosted our Analyst Day in New Orleans. I want to thank all of you who attended in-person and listened online then as well. We provided a comprehensive update on our business strategy and discussed the macro drivers behind our unique growth story, onshoring, clean energy, electrification and technology. We also talked about our customer first approach that is the cornerstone for achieving outcomes that drive significant long-term value for all our stakeholders. Of course, our customers, and also our employees, our communities and our owners. We continue to make progress towards these outcomes, helping us achieve our near and long-term objectives.
Starting with our financial results. Today, we are reporting strong quarterly adjusted earnings per share of $1.92. Kimberly will go over the details. The bottom line is that we remain firmly on-track to meet our 2024 guidance.
Now turning to business updates. I am pleased to report that Entergy Louisiana has reached an agreement in principle with the LPSC Staff and other parties on its FRP extension. The settlement, subject to LPSC approval would also resolve several other open matters, including all FRPs prior to the 2023 test year. By settling these matters, Entergy Louisiana will resolve all its outstanding base ratemaking proceedings. As part of this settlement, we will provide $184 million of customer credits, which includes our agreement to increase customer sharing of income tax benefits resulting from the 2016 to 2018 IRS audit. We're also pleased to announce that System Energy Resources or SERI, reached an agreement in principle with the LPSC Staff on the long standing litigation at FERC. Pending approval, this settlement substantially resolves the major litigation at SERI and removes an ongoing challenge for many of our stakeholders to understand and value.
These agreements as well as other commission approvals earlier this year, including the resilience plan and the process to accelerate the development of renewables, provide important clarity for all our stakeholders and allows Entergy Louisiana, the commission, and other stakeholders to focus on capturing the significant growth opportunities before us. We appreciate the hard work of all parties to get to this point and look forward to focusing on the future together. We will provide more information on the Entergy Louisiana settlement when we file the full settlement agreement, which we plan to submit in the coming days. We anticipate the commission to take up both matters at its next business and executive meeting on August 14th.
Hurricane Beryl made landfall in Southeast Texas in early July. The storm affected about half of our Texas customers. I first want to thank our customers and community leaders for their understanding and support during restoration. We are honored to serve them. And we are once again inspired by our communities coming together in the face of such an event. Beryl sustained high winds, uprooted and damaged a significant number of trees, which caused most of the grid damage and customer outages. This included many tall trees outside right of way that fell into our transmission and distribution lines. We brought a lot of experience and lessons learned from past storms into this effort, which led to timely, safe and cost effective power restoration. Our past learnings also facilitated our communication plan, providing accurate, trusted and timely updates regarding outages and restoration timelines.
We were focused on keeping all stakeholders up-to-date with customers as well as state and local officials at the top of the list. As we discussed at Analyst Day, when the power is out, the everyday activities of our customers and communities are interrupted. This is why a well-prepared operational response, coupled with clear communication is more important than ever. I'm very proud of our employees who keep our customers top-of-mind, working diligently before the storm to learn and prepare and tirelessly after the storm to safely restore power as quickly as possible.
Beryl reminded us of the importance of resilience, and we saw first-hand how investment to support growth delivers benefits across multiple dimensions. The ball of our peninsula is a good example. To support growth, we built a new elevated substation and installed more than 200 new distribution structures built to modern standards. As expected, these new assets easily with stood Beryl, which improved performance during the storm and supported timely restoration. To further our resilience efforts, Entergy Texas submitted its Future Ready Resiliency Plan, requesting approval for a three-year first phase, estimated to cost $335 million. To maximize benefits, while minimizing costs for customers, roughly $200 million is contingent on a grant from the Texas Energy Fund. The legislation calls for a commission decision within 180 days of filing. Separately, Entergy New Orleans held a technical conference last week to further Phase 1 of its plan and we are targeting a council decision before year end.
Entergy's unique and robust growth story was a key theme we highlighted at Analyst Day, and we are making important progress to support growth across our businesses. For example, we hosted a Southeast Texas Leadership Summit, which brought together more than 200 industry, community and political leaders to discuss collaborative approaches to serve the region's growing energy needs. At the summit, we outlined our Southeast Texas Energy Plan or STEP Ahead plan, which includes additional generation capacity.
Advancing that plan, Entergy Texas submitted its filing requesting a CCN for two new generation resources. Legend Power Station, a 754-megawatt combined cycle combustion turbine to be located in Port Arthur will be built to ensure sustainability and long-term viability as the plant will be carbon capture-enabled and feature hydrogen-capable technology. We're working with customers assessing their interest in purchasing the clean attributes from carbon capture. While our discussions are in early stages, customer interest in CCS appears to be strong.
Our request also includes Lone Star Power Station, a 453-megawatt combustion turbine to be located in Cleveland, Texas. That will also be hydrogen-capable. The total investment is estimated at approximately $2.2 billion, which includes transmission and interconnection costs as well as financing costs during construction.
Both plants are expected to be online in summer of 2028. Also furthering our STEP Ahead plan, Entergy Texas filed for approval of two owned solar projects that came out of RFPs. The capacity for the proposed additions totals more than 300 megawatts. The first is expected to come online in 2027 and the second in 2028. The green attributes from these plants will help meet our customer demands for clean-energy. More broadly, clean-energy and electrification remain key macro drivers behind the growth across our businesses.
Many of our large customers have clean energy goals. We are expanding our clean energy capacity to support those objectives. To that end, in early June, we signed a joint development agreement that will accelerate the development of up to 4.5 gigawatts of new Entergy owned solar generation and energy storage projects. Also supporting our renewables expansion, and as I referenced earlier, the Louisiana PSC approved a streamline and enhanced renewable RFP process to add-up to 3,000 megawatts of renewable capacity. This will enable Entergy Louisiana to bring renewable resources online much more quickly, which helps attract new customers to our service area.
Technology is another macro driver for our growth. At Analyst Day, we identified 5 gigawatts to 10 gigawatts of new hyperscale data center potential in our service areas, which was informed by customer discussions. We continue to have very active customer and other stakeholder engagement on this front and the growth potential for all our stakeholders from this driver remains strong.
Putting our customers first, our path forward to achieve regulatory outcomes that benefit, excuse me, putting our customers first remains our path forward to achieve regulatory outcomes that benefit all stakeholders. We continue to move steadily through regulatory proceedings. Results of this are evident in the agreement in principle in Louisiana and the filings in Texas that I already discussed. In June, Entergy Mississippi's annual FRP filing was approved. We continue to work well with the Mississippi Commission to achieve good outcomes that support our customers and the operating company's credit, which puts Entergy Mississippi in a strong position to bring additional growth to the state, which benefits all stakeholders. In addition, Entergy New Orleans and Entergy Arkansas filed their annual FRPs. We expect new rates to be in effect in September for New Orleans and January for Arkansas. And finally, our gas LDC sale continues to move along.
For Entergy Louisiana, the staff report and recommendation was filed on Tuesday of this week, stating that staff believes the transaction is in the public interest subject to customary conditions. We believe the matter will be taken up by the LPSC on August 14 at its business and executive meeting. For Entergy New Orleans, the hearing is scheduled to begin on September 9 and we expect a decision from the City Council in early 2025. We remain on track to close the transaction by the third quarter of 2025.
Our commitment to supporting our communities continued to be evident this past quarter. Our efforts were recognized as Entergy was once again a Civic 50, Points of Light honoree. The Civic 50 has served as a national standard for corporate citizenship and showcases how leading companies are moving social impact of community to the core of their business. In the first half of 2024, we made steady progress across key customer, operational, regulatory and financial fronts. We're solidly on track to achieve our objectives for 2024 as well as our longer-term outlook. By continuing to put our customers first, we remain focused on delivering premium value to each of our key stakeholders.
I'll now turn the call over to Kimberly, who will review our financial results for the quarter.
