Mild winter decreases demand for TVA’s electricity

NORTH MISSISSIPPI — Milder winter weather led to lower electricity demand across the Tennessee Valley Authority’s seven-state service territory in the second quarter of the fiscal year, compared with the same period a year ago, the federal utility reports.

In its quarterly financial filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, TVA noted that power demand, which was mainly affected by sales to residential customers of local power companies that distribute TVA-produced electricity, declined 6 percent to 42.9 billion kilowatt-hours for the three-month period ending March 31, compared with the second quarter of 2010. Demand so far in fiscal year 2011 is about 2 percent less than a year ago.

The second-quarter results also were affected by increases in pension and post-retirement benefit expenses, higher operating and maintenance expenses from refueling nuclear plants and outages at coal-fired and gas-fired plants and higher fuel and purchased power costs, which were partially offset by an increase in fuel-related revenue through the monthly fuel cost adjustment.

TVA said it was making significant progress in restoring service to areas in Alabama, Mississippi and Tennessee that lost electricity in severe storms swept across the region April 27-28. The storms damaged or destroyed numerous power lines, disrupting electric service across wide areas. Repairs to the power system were still underway, and TVA will be calculating the financial impact of the storms over the coming weeks.

Also during the storms, the Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant entered safe shutdown status and activated backup power supplies while power lines in the region underwent repairs.

Source: TVA