Co-owners of the Vogtle Electric Generating Plant — including the city of Commerce — announced their intent to maintain their proportionate share of ownership in the proposed Units 3 and 4. As co-owners of two existing units at Plant Vogtle, the utilities had the rights to participate in the new Vogtle units but were required to make a final commitment by July 2.
Earlier this year, Georgia Power, acting for itself and for Plant Vogtle’s co-owners (Oglethorpe Power, Municipal Electric Authority of Georgia and Dalton Utilities), entered a contract with Westinghouse Electric Company and The Shaw Group Inc.’s Power Group, for the development and construction of two nuclear units.
Oglethorpe Power, MEAG Power and Dalton Utilities have informed Georgia Power that they will maintain the following existing ownership shares in the new units: Oglethorpe Power, 30 percent; MEAG Power, 22.7 percent; and Dalton Utilities, 1.6 percent. Georgia Power’s proportionate share is 45.7 percent.
Commerce’s share is expected to be 5.865 megawatts. Its current peak is about 14 megawatts, according to City Manager Clarence Bryant.
Of the purchase, .865 megawatts will be deferred until 2036 — during which it will be sold to third parties. The five megawatts are expected to be available to the city in 2016-2017 as the two nuclear units come online.
“The first unit comes online in 2016, so I expect we’ll get half of it the first year and the other half the next,” Bryant said.
The cost of the purchase has not been made public under a confidentiality agreement between the partners and Westinghouse, but should be released within a couple of weeks, Bryant said.
If certified by the Georgia PSC and licensed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), the two Westinghouse AP1000 units, with a capacity of 1,100 megawatts each, would be constructed at the Vogtle Electric Generating Plant site near Waynesboro and would be placed in service in 2016 and 2017, respectively.
Georgia Power is the largest subsidiary of The Southern Company (NYSE: SO), one of the nation’s largest generators of electricity. It serves 2.3 million customers in all but four of Georgia’s 159 counties.
Oglethorpe Power Corporation is a $4.9 billion power supply cooperative serving 38 consumer-owned EMCs in Georgia - including Jackson EMC. These EMCs provide retail electric service to approximately 4.1 million Georgians. Oglethorpe Power is the nation’s largest electric cooperative in assets, annual kilowatt-hour sales and ultimate consumers served.
The Municipal Electric Authority of Georgia (MEAG Power) is a public generation and transmission organization providing power to 49 Georgia communities with annual electric sales of $736 million and 10.8 million megawatt-hours of delivered energy in 2007.
Dalton Utilities has operated as a public utility since 1889 and provides potable water, electrical, natural gas and wastewater treatment services to approximately 65,000 customers in Dalton and portions of Whitfield, Murray, Gordon, Catoosa and Floyd counties.
Southern Nuclear, a subsidiary of Southern Company, operates Plant Vogtle’s two existing nuclear power units for the plant owners. Southern Nuclear also operates the Edwin I. Hatch Nuclear Plant near Baxley and the Joseph M. Farley Nuclear Plant near Dothan, AL.
