Tennessee Valley Authority Keeps Pace with Increasing Electricity Demand

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The following is an advisory from Industrialinfo.com (Industrial Information Resources, Inc.; Houston, Texas) (IIR). The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is keeping up the pace with increasing electricity demand in their seven state service region. Formed in 1933 by the United States Congress, TVA primarily provides flood control, navigation and electric power in the Tennessee Valley Region. Today, TVA generates over 29,000 mega-watts (MW) of electricity from a wide array of resources such as fossil fuels, nuclear, hydro, wind and solar to provide power to nearly eight million residents. During the past decade strong economic growth in the area has contributed to an increase in power demand at an annual rate of nearly three percent.

To meet that demand, TVA has added over 1,200 MW of new capacity, negotiated power purchase agreements with Private Energy Producers (PEP), performed plant overhauls to improve reliability, and retrofitted sixteen combustion turbines to burn either oil or natural gas. This has put the TVA in a position to meet and slightly exceed today's current demand.

TVA continues to follow an aggressive strategy to meet the projected growth in electrical demands for the coming decade and beyond. Presently, TVA plans to construct a new 340MW natural gas fired peaking plant and a 510MW combined cycle base load station. However, to meet new responsibilities of the twenty first century, TVA plans to turn to new technologies such as micro turbines, fuel cells and clean coal technology. In addition, there are ongoing studies to determine the feasibility of additional capacity from nuclear, wind and solar resources.

Britt Burt, Power Group Manager with Industrialinfo.com indicated that, Research on the TVA recently conducted by IIR identifies over $1.5 billion in project spending either under construction or in development and scheduled for completion between June 2002 and January 2006. If completed, these projects will add over 2,000MW of new capacity to the TVA service area and system.