Leo P. Denault
Chairman Of The Board And Chief Executive Officer at Entergy
Thank you, Bill, and good morning, everyone. Today, we are reporting quarterly results that keep us firmly on track to meet our financial commitments. Third quarter adjusted earnings were $2.45 per share. With good visibility into the rest of the year, we are narrowing our 2021 guidance range and $5.90 through $6.10 per share and expect to achieve 2022 and 2023 results in line with our outlooks. Further, we are extending our outlooks to include 2024 and see our steady predictable growth of five percent to seven percent continuing through this period. Additionally, we achieved the milestone of raising our dividend by six percent and aligning with our earnings growth. This happened on the schedule we previously communicated and represents another commitment met. We have developed a more resilient business. And despite $65 million of nonfuel revenue losses in the third quarter due to Hurricane Ida, we are maintaining our financial commitments.
Our resiliency provides stability that is valuable to all of our stakeholders, particularly customers and owners. The quarter was heavily impacted by Hurricane Ida, which made landfall as a strong category for hurricane bringing powerful destructive wins across New Orleans, Baton Rouge and beyond. Our coastal communities were particularly hard hit by both strong winds and storm surge. Ida disrupted the lives and businesses of many of our customers and communities and Entergy was there to help when they needed us. We gathered a restoration force of 27,000, our largest ever, representing Entergy employees, contractors and mutual assistance crews from 41 states across the country. I would like to take a moment to personally thank our employees and the crews who answered the call to come help restore power to our impacted customers.
Further gratitude goes to our employees who worked restoration despite their own homes being damaged by Ida. They epitomize what it means to put our customers first. I never cease to be amazed by the dedication and effectiveness of the many restoration workers who step away from their lives for weeks at a time to help our customers and communities get their lives and livelihoods back up and running again. Despite Ida's wins creating significant damage and destruction across our power grid with close to one million peak outages, our team restored customers at a rapid pace. In just over a week, we had roughly half of all customers restored. Metro areas like New Orleans and Baton Rouge saw restoration essentially completed by day 10. Within three weeks, more than 98% of all affected customers were restored.
And it's easy to lose sight of the fact that this restoration was successfully accomplished while dealing with the effects of the pandemic. Entergy also helped our customers and communities throughout the recovery process by developing -- or deploying 165 commercial scale generators to power critical community infrastructure like medical facilities, gas stations, grocery stores, municipal water systems and community cooling centers in advance of power being restored. In addition to restoration work, Entergy's employees contributed countless hours to their communities and Entergy shareholders committed $1.25 million to help affected communities rebuild and recover. While power has been restored to customers who can safely take it, our job is not finished. We are committed to minimizing the effects of Ida on our customers' bills. We will work with our regulators to seek securitization of Ida storm costs, which is a proven and low-cost means of recovery.
Further, we are coordinating with key officials and stakeholders, including Louisiana Governor Edwards, The City Council of New Orleans, Louisiana Public Service Commission, Louisiana Congressional Delegation and the Biden administration to seek federal support that could offset the cost of our customers for Ida in the 2020 storms. There is widespread alignment among state and local leaders on the compelling case that Louisiana has to obtain federal support. We are fully aligned with this perspective. To be clear, any federal funding that Entergy utilities obtain will reduce the customer obligation dollar for dollar. We're also committed to mitigating the impacts of future storms. Entergy has made significant transmission and distribution investments, nearly $10 billion over the last five years, which made our system more resilient.
We've seen those new investments perform well under the most challenging conditions. Wind damage to our transmission structures, for example, has occurred most almost exclusively to older structures built to prior standards. It has become clear that major weather events of all types are occurring more frequently and with greater intensity. Hurricane Laura made landfall as the strongest storm to hit the Louisiana Coast since 1856. Then exactly 12 months later, Hurricane Ida hit with almost equal force. Our resilient standards and asset programs have never been static, and we've continued to evolve them. And as I mentioned, our investments are working as designed. However, the uptick in severity and frequency of storms is compelling us to take a fresh look at how we can make our system more resilient, including the pace at which we can achieve it. Even prior to Ida, we are actively deploying multiple options along the resiliency scale, particularly for our service areas south of I-10 and I-12, which has the greatest exposure to hurricane-strength winds and flooding.
Evaluating these resiliency options needs to be done under future climate scenarios. And we are taking into account important considerations such as customer affordability and sufficiency of materials and skilled labor. This customer-driven investment will be significant, and we will work collaboratively with our regulators and other stakeholders to determine the optimal path forward. Coming back to the quarter, I would like to highlight that despite dealing with a major storm, the business continued to run well without missing a beat. We've made great progress in several open proceedings. First, Entergy Arkansas filed a unanimous settlement for its formula rate plan, and the Arkansas Commission has agreed to cancel the hearing and take up the settlement based on the filed testimony, which is positive.
New rates in Arkansas will be implemented in January. In New Orleans, we recently implemented rates at the level that reflected all adjustments proposed by the council's advisers so there are no further proceedings there. We also are pleased to note that Entergy Arkansas reached a settlement with key customers of its Green Promise tariff filing. If approved, this tariff will enable us to offer green solutions to meet the growing sustainability demands of our customers. And we're making progress on other open proceedings. In Entergy Louisiana, its FRP rates went into effect. Entergy Arkansas received approval for the West Memphis Solar project. Entergy Texas reached an unopposed settlement on its 2020 storm cost filing. And Entergy Texas also filed for approval of the Orange County Advanced Power Station. And the Louisiana 2020 storm recovery and securitization process remains on track.
We continue to make progress on decarbonizing our fleet. We've announced five gigawatts of solar in our supply plan through 2030 with a goal of doing more. And an update to our supply plan and renewables growth will be provided next week at EEI. In addition to healthy meeting -- in addition to helping meet decarbonization goals, the cost of renewable resources relative to conventional resources continues to trend favorably, and renewable resources provided an important edge against rising and volatile natural gas prices. We will provide more details around our latest resource plans at EEI. Last quarter, I discussed ways in which Entergy can help our industrial customers meet their sustainability goals. While many have expressed long-term goals like net-zero by 2050, even more have developed shorter-term interim goals that will require action by the end of the decade.
Clean electrification is one of several important tools that our industrial customers have as a means to achieve their objectives. Clean electrification provides a great opportunity for load growth and will require significant capital investment in renewable generation, transmission and distribution. The load growth that comes with electrification will help pay for incremental customer-centric investments. We'll have more to discuss regarding the opportunity we have to help our customers meet their sustainability objectives next week at EEI. While it is important to discuss these longer-term growth opportunities, I want to make sure we don't lose sight of the very solid based investment plan that we have in front of us. Over the next three years, we have a $12 billion capital plan that is designed to deliver reliability, resilience and improve customer experience and environmental and cost efficiency benefits to our customers.
When paired with our well-defined regulatory constructs, our plan will deliver five percent to seven percent adjusted EPS growth for our owners over the next three years. That's a very solid base plan. And beyond this strong foundation, these other opportunities in renewable generation, clean electrification and resilience acceleration will serve to extend our runway of growth throughout the rest of the decade. We look forward to continuing the conversation with you at the EEI Financial Conference.
Now Drew will review the quarterly results.