Embarking upon a new century of success, Entergy Mississippi continues to revolutionize the future of power generation
Take an Arkansas visionary, a handshake and a new industry that’ll change the course of the world forever, and you’re transported back in time to the birth of Entergy Mississippi. Founded by Arkansas businessman, Harvey Couch, back in 1923, the business initially started out under the name of ‘The Mississippi Power & Light Company’, acquiring several utility systems throughout Jackson, Columbus, Greenville, and Vicksburg, right at the rise of the electrical industry. Today, Entergy Mississippi is a true powerhouse, leading the state of Mississippi at the forefront of energy innovation.
Energy, Oil & Gas last sat down with Entergy Mississippi in 2023 in celebration of one of its most significant milestones to date: its 100-year anniversary.
Commemorating a century of excellence, Haley Fisackerly, Entergy Mississippi’s Chief Executive Officer, shared exclusive insight into the company’s heritage and how it continues to evolve with the industry, keeping affordability and reliability at its core. Now, as Entergy Mississippi embarks upon the latter half of its 102nd year, it continues to champion its legacy of innovation and dynamism within the electrical industry. The market may be changing rapidly, presenting a plethora of new challenges, but Entergy Mississippi is harnessing new opportunities to support its communities.
In September 2025, Haley rejoins Energy, Oil & Gas to offer an update on how the company has progressed. “What’s happened in the two years since we last spoke has been amazing. As we enter our next century of service, we are seeing a transformation in the business like we’ve never seen before,” Haley reveals. “When we were founded 100 years ago, electricity was still a new industry, and now, the industry is seeing a rebirth; a lot of manufacturing is moving back to the United States, and there’s been a huge growth in the number of data centers, cloud storage hubs, machine learning and artificial intelligence. We’re excited because this growth will allow us to better serve our customers and communities.”
In terms of new developments, Entergy Mississippi has been thrilled to announce perhaps its biggest partnership to date: a major data center project with Amazon Web Services (AWS). For a company that’s committed to empowering its communities, this project is monumental for Entergy Mississippi. Regarded as the ‘largest economic win in Mississippi history’, AWS’ investment in the state will change the lives of many, creating thousands of new jobs, generating significant tax revenue and funding an increasing number of charitable and philanthropic projects for communities.
“We entered into an agreement with AWS to provide two data center campuses in Madison County, which is a part of the Entergy Mississippi service territory. It’s the largest economic project in state history, fivefold,” Haley affirms. “AWS has committed over $10 billion to the state of Mississippi, which will create more than 1000 new jobs: it’s a real win for our customers and communities. These investments are also allowing us to pull two of our later-planned power plants forward, which will be a real benefit to our customers.
“Growth is very important when it comes to serving our customers because the more money we spend, the more cost we’re adding to the business, and if our customer base isn’t growing then that cost gets transferred to our customers. When 20 percent of your customers live below the national poverty level, you must be cognizant of that, so we were very aggressive in finding a partner like AWS to come in and help us to grow, invest and unlock new technologies.”
As Haley explains, this investment will accelerate Entergy Mississippi’s planned infrastructure upgrade projects, without transferring the cost to its consumers – a major win for the company and its customers alike. One of such projects is Entergy Mississippi’s Delta Blues Advanced Power Station, situated in Greenville, Mississippi. Focusing heavily on sustainable operation, Delta Blues is set to be a 745-megawatt facility able to power nearly 400,000 homes across Entergy Mississippi’s service area, which will significantly increase the quality and reliability of the energy provided to its customers.
“We recently broke ground on this $1.2 billion project, so it is under construction as we speak – a very highly efficient plant that uses less water, has less emissions and is much quieter. We’re going to install Mitsubishi turbines into the plant, which are 50 percent more efficient than what they’re replacing, and we’re building the plant in such a way that it can be retrofitted to use hydrogen fuel when it becomes more economic. We’re also building the plant to be adaptable to carbon capture capability, so that our CO2 emissions can be sequestered and not admitted into the environment,” Haley elaborates.
On the topic of environmental impact, Entergy Mississippi is also making significant strides into new renewable energies; in particular, nuclear. Haley comments: “We’ve been speaking with potential customers on partnerships within that arrangement. In the last couple of weeks [at the time of writing], we filed a request at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to extend an early site permit at our Grand Gulf nuclear power plant in Claiborne County, Mississippi. We won the ESP permit for that site back in 2007, which is now set to expire in 2027, but we’re currently working with the new Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Trump Administration on seeking an extension for another 20 years. That’s very important to us because it would help us to accelerate and reduce costs on another plant if we were to look at building one; it’s something we’re studying very carefully.
“For example, we’re looking at new technologies such as small modular reactors, which are greater passive safety systems than what we currently use today,” he continues. “We’re making investments in upgrading our transmission systems with more resilient, robust structures, as well as into various other grid enhancement technologies, to ensure that the grid is stable and operating at its highest capability.”
With all these developments well underway, Entergy Mississippi is positioned for an exciting 12 months and an even more exciting future. Continuing to build upon its past legacies, Entergy Mississippi enters a new era defined by ambition, innovation and technological advancement, taking both its customers and communities into the future together. Haley concludes by sharing what the next chapter holds for Entergy Mississippi.
“Now, we aim to look for other productive growth opportunities to serve our communities. Reliability and affordability remain at the front of our customers’ minds, and the new revenue generated by AWS is going to allow us to make further investments to offset the rate impacts to them,” he finishes, optimistic for the years ahead. “We’ll be rolling out a new reliability plan over the next five years to really drive that service and make the grid more reliable; we intend to introduce more self-healing networks to sense problems on the grid before they result in outages.
“When I talked about this being a transformational period within the industry, it’s worth noting that the United States is looking at energy dominance surrounding AI, and Entergy is making this happen – not just with us, but with our sister companies in Louisiana and Arkansas as well. We’re working to bring these opportunities forward, not only to benefit our customers and communities, but to unlock a new era of investment in the United States going forward.”