BATON ROUGE - The Baton Rouge Press Club met Monday with the three remaining candidates for the Public Service Commission.

Republican Julie Quinn, Republican Jean-Paul Coussan and Democrat Nick Laborde may all have conflicting policies, but they all share support for Louisiana to move into grid hardening. 

Grid hardening is the process of energy poles being switched out for metal poles that would improve the grid's ability to withstand and recover after outages while also improving service levels and protecting customers from outages.

One thing they all raise concerns over is the price tag regarding grid hardening.

"The question is who has to bear the cost which has to bear the risk, and I will fight for the ratepayer to make sure it doesn't fall back on the ratepayer where it should fall on the utility companies to protect us when we are down for a storm," Coussan said. 

"There was a moment where the energy had like $74, 75 million to them to bury powerlines and Entergy then turned around said they were not going to do it because it cost too much money," Laborde said.

"You can not let the utility companies come in and make a proposal for $50-90 billion worth of grid hardening because that gets passed on federal law and gets passed onto the consumer on their bill," Quinn said. 

Earlier in the day, Entergy announced the receipt of multiple FEMA grants that would strengthen various parishes' energy grids. They also announced that there are active applications for similar grid hardening in Baton Rouge.

"We’re ensuring that our communities, businesses and critical infrastructure can recover faster and at a lower cost after major storms. This benefits not only Louisiana but the entire country," Entergy said.

Coussan said grid hardening should include technical concerns.

"Not just the poles and the wires but also the technological side of it. so that we can protect against the hacking of countries like China and Russia" Coussan said.

Laborde said grid hardening will be able to help save money when it comes to solar as well.

"We would be able to do things like bring back one-to-one net metering so that folks if you generate a kilowatt you get a kilowatt," Laborde said.

Quinn said the benefits are obvious after Grand Isle put billions into upgrading their grid.

"They didn't lose power for one hour, not one minute so it is effective," Laborde said.