Deadly tornadoes that swept across the south in late April are now taking a financial toll on the country’s largest public utility. The Tennessee Valley Authority just posted a $240 million loss.The three-month period was one of TVA’s worst.
The tornadoes that tore through Alabama and Tennessee killed more than 300 people and also forced the shutdown of TVA’s largest nuclear reactor. Just replacing that electricity cost the power producer $95 million. The storms also ripped up much of TVA’s transmission grid in Alabama, according to Rob Manning, who oversees power systems operations. He appears in a mini-documentary produced by the utility.
“We’ve never had this many structures impacted by any storm – ice storm, tornado, hurricane. We’ve never seen this much devastation across the system.”
Some of TVA’s losses stem from cooler-than-normal temperatures earlier in the year and the settlement of a 10-year-old environmental dispute, which requires the utility to idle its oldest coal plants.
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