{"id":3232,"date":"2013-04-29T11:06:16","date_gmt":"2013-04-29T15:06:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/?p=3232"},"modified":"2013-04-29T12:19:58","modified_gmt":"2013-04-29T16:19:58","slug":"poor-southern-company-losing-money-on-kemper-coal-in-mississippi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2013\/04\/poor-southern-company-losing-money-on-kemper-coal-in-mississippi.html","title":{"rendered":"Poor Southern Company: losing money on Kemper Coal in Mississippi"},"content":{"rendered":"

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nApparently $1.88 billion<\/a> wasn’t enough for\r\nSouthern Company to charge the ratepayers\r\nof Mississippi Power enough for their “clean coal” plant.\r\n“Escalating costs”: kind of like\r\n\r\nSO’s new nukes at Plant Vogtle<\/a>?\r\nSouthern Company CEO Fanning says “I know people will try and link\r\nthose, but they are not at all even similar.”\r\nWhat do you think?\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nKristi Swartz wrote for the AJC 24 April 2103,\r\n\r\nMiss. power plant costs hurt Southern Co. profit,<\/a>\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n

\r\nEscalating costs at a new power plant in Mississippi cut into\r\nAtlanta-based Southern Co.’s first-quarter profits, the utility\r\ncompany reported Wednesday.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nSouthern earned $81 million, or 9 cents a share, during the first\r\nquarter, versus $368 million, or 42 cents a share, during the same\r\nperiod a year ago.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nCost increases at Plant Ratcliffe in Kemper County, Miss., reduced\r\nSouthern’s quarterly earnings by $333 million. Another one-time\r\ncharge lowered profits by an additional $16 million.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nWithout those items, Southern’s earnings would have been $430\r\nmillion, or .49 cents a share.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nSouthern’s Mississippi utility, Mississippi Power, is building a\r\nnew-generation power plant that converts coal to natural gas. The\r\ncompany said in a filing Tuesday that the cost of the project has\r\nincreased 19 percent to $3.42 billion. The amount of money\r\nMississippi Power can recoup from consumers is capped at $2.88\r\nbillion because of a settlement the company reached with state\r\nutility regulators.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nAt least Mississippi had the good sense to cap their\r\nConstruction Work in Progress (CWIP),\r\nunlike the Georgia legislature, which did not approve\r\n\r\nHB 267<\/a>, which would have capped Plant Vogtle overrun charges to ratepayers.\r\nThe possibility that that might happen seems to worry\r\nSO CEO Thomas A. Fanning.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n

\r\nSouthern’s decision to absorb some of Plant Ratcliffe’s cost\r\noverruns comes one month after the company announced $740 million in\r\ncost increases at Georgia Power’s Plant Vogtle nuclear expansion\r\nproject. Consumer advocates fear that Georgia Power customers\r\neventually will pay for Vogtle’s cost increases.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nFanning warned against making any connection between Mississippi\r\nPower’s decision and what Georgia Power could do.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n“Vogtle is completely different than Kemper,” Fanning\r\nsaid. Vogtle’s cost increases are tied to scheduling delays, while\r\nKemper’s increases are because Mississippi Power underestimated the\r\namount of piping needed, he said.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nAnd Vogtle had concrete pouring errors<\/a>\r\nand apparently\r\n\r\ncouldn’t even manage to get one of its reactor vessels<\/a>\r\nfrom Savannah to the site.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nI agree with Sierra Club.\r\nReuters reported 24 April 2013,\r\n\r\nMore workers, pipe needed to finish Southern Co coal project<\/a>,\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n

\r\nEnvironmental group Sierra Club, which is challenging Kemper’s\r\nconstruction, called on the Mississippi Public Service Commission to\r\nimmediately review the prudency of the utility’s investment in the\r\ncostly project.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\n“The Sierra Club and our experts have been warning of this for\r\nyears,” said Louie Miller, state director of the group. “It’s time\r\nto pull the plug on this dirty, expensive, and unnecessary\r\nboondoggle.”\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nAnd that other boondoggle at Plant Vogtle: pull the plug.\r\nRemember,\r\n\r\nGeorgia Power can charge customers for it even if it’s cancelled<\/a>,\r\nso pull the plug sooner, rather than later after it runs up even more charges.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n -jsq\r\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Apparently $1.88 billion wasn’t enough for Southern Company to charge the ratepayers of Mississippi Power enough for their “clean coal” plant. “Escalating costs”: kind of like SO’s new nukes at Plant Vogtle? Southern Company CEO Fanning says “I know people will try and link those, but they are not at all even similar.” What do […]","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[216,142,14,8,18,104],"tags":[8753,8746,8704,8701,8708,171,8702,12,7,217,219,107,6230,108,6],"class_list":["post-3232","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-coal","category-cwip","category-economy","category-georgia","category-georgia-power","category-nuclear","tag-coal","tag-cwip","tag-economy","tag-georgia","tag-georgia-power","tag-kemper-coal","tag-lake","tag-lowndes-area-knowledge-exchange","tag-lowndes-county","tag-mississippi","tag-mississippi-power","tag-plant-vogtle","tag-ratepayers","tag-southern-company","tag-valdosta"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-Q8","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3232","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3232"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3232\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3241,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3232\/revisions\/3241"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}