TVA, Power Companies Build Infrastructure To Spark Growth
Published Feb 29, 2008
TVA boasts 99.999 percent reliability for its power distribution.
If you think infrastructure means just roads, think again.
The Tennessee Valley Authority and power distributors throughout the 22 counties of the Southeast Industrial Development Association have embraced infrastructure’s broadest definition in offering commercial and residential customers an array of services.
“Our customers want choices, and we’re here to provide them,” says Colman Keane, corporate technical consultant with the Chattanooga Electric Power Board. Established in 1935 to provide electricity across the greater Chattanooga area, the EPB serves more than 160,000 customers in about 700 square miles.
In 2000, the municipal utility entered the fiber-optics field, providing business customers with high-speed Internet access and digital telephone service.
Now, with its new Fiber to the Home initiative, the EPB plans to start providing those same broadband services, including video entertainment, to homes as early as fall 2008.
“We are looking to cover 80 percent of our footprint within three years – and then the remaining 20 percent in the rural areas within two years after that,” Keane says. He adds that income generated by the Internet-based services will fund construction of the fiber infrastructure.
According to EPB studies, fiber’s economic impact will be nearly $1 billion over 10 years.
Leveraging Capital Investments
When it comes to economic development, TVA partners with its power distributors, regional organizations such as SEIDA, and local governments and leaders to promote the Tennessee Valley as a prime business and industry locale.
“Our commitment continues as TVA works together with our many partners to create quality jobs, retain and grow existing companies, and leverage additional capital investments in the region,” says John Bradley, TVA senior vice president of economic development.
The nation’s largest public power company, TVA itself is an economic development draw, thanks to the reliable and affordable power it generates.
Terry Boston, TVA executive vice president of power system operations, says summer 2007 was the region’s hottest since record keeping began in 1952, yet industrial customers suffered no power disruptions. The utility boasts 99.999 percent reliability. “That’s five 9s for eight years,” he says.
Boston calls the SEIDA region “a rich area [for] capacity in the TVA system.” In the SEIDA region are the Watts Bar, Chickamauga and Nickajack dams and hydroelectric generation plants on the Tennessee River, the Hiwassee River’s three hydroelectric dams in North Carolina, the Ocoee River’s three hydroelectric dams in Tennessee, and the Watts Bar and Sequoya nuclear plants. The TVA board of directors has approved the $2.4 billion, five-year construction of Watts Bar Unit 2 near Spring City, Tenn.
Serving Rural Areas
Besides electricity, natural gas can be an integral part of economic development, but the reality is that natural gas pipelines are not universally available. That’s where propane gas comes into play.
For example, many rural customers – both commercial and residential – in the eight counties served by the Sequachee Valley Electric Cooperative need propane for their heating systems. Accordingly, in 2000, the cooperative decided to “diversify our business portfolio” and purchase a local propane supplier, Vice President Mike Partin says.
“Part of our thought process is to be a total energy partner for our membership,” Partin says. “If there’s a need out there, cooperatives try to fill it.”
Erik Brinke, economic development director of the Blue Ridge Mountain Electric Membership Corp., agrees with that sentiment. Serving 48,000 member-customers in five Georgia and North Carolina counties, BRMEMC entered the broadband business in 2002, first for commercial entities.
“It’s economic development at its finest. It’s the highway of the future, and that’s where we’re going,” Brinke says.
The utility is expanding the broadband service to residential customers, and in 2008 it will roll out its Triple Play product, offering voice, video and data for one price.
“We’ll be bringing services to people in the region who have never before had it, just like it was in the late 1930s and early 1940s when we brought power into the communities that never before had it,” Brinke says. “It’s very much like our original mission.”
Story by Sharon H. Fitzgerald
Photo by staff
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