TVA At A Glance

For more than seven decades, the Tennessee Valley Authority has improved the quality of life in the Tennessee Valley, making our region a better place to live, work, and raise a family.  As a federal corporation and the nation’s largest public power provider, TVA touches millions of lives through three key areas:

• Energy – providing reliable, competitively priced electric power that helps businesses and families prosper. TVA sells power to 158 local distributors that serve 9 million people and 650,000 businesses and industries in the seven-state TVA service area. It covers almost all of Tennessee and parts of Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, and Virginia. TVA also sells power to about five-dozen large industrial customers and federal installations.
• Environmental stewardship – TVA helps our region thrive and enables residents to enjoy a higher quality of life by managing the Tennessee River and adjoining lands to provide a better environment for our children and grandchildren. Through its river system operations, TVA reduces flood damage, provides for river transportation and power production, maintains water quality and water supply, supports recreation, and promotes wise land use.
• Economic development – building partnerships that foster economic prosperity. TVA helps companies and communities attract investments that bring good jobs to our region and keep them here.

Financial

• TVA is financially self-supporting and receives no funding from taxpayers.
• TVA uses bonds, notes, and other forms of borrowing to finance its power system. TVA bonds and notes are backed by the TVA power system rather than guaranteed by the U.S. Government.
• Investors in all 50 states and over 60 nations have purchased TVA bonds and notes.
• TVA’s rated senior bonds and notes receive the highest possible credit ratings (AAA/Aaa) from major credit rating agencies Standard & Poor’s, Fitch Ratings, and Moody’s Investors Service.

Energy

TVA’s power system

• TVA’s power system consists of a diverse mix of fuel sources, including fossil, nuclear, hydro, and renewables. TVA has 11 coal-fired, two combined-cycle, and eight combustion-turbine sites; three nuclear plants; 29 hydroelectric dams; two diesel generator sites, one pumped-storage plant; 16 solar power sites; one wind-power site; one digester-gas site, and one biomass co-firing site.
• TVA generates more electricity than any other public utility in the nation and supplies power through a network of 15,860 miles of transmission line; 487 substations, power switchyards and switching stations; and 1,070 individual interchange and customer connection points.

Reliability and affordability

• The TVA transmission system has been 99.999 percent reliable for nine years in a row.
• TVA residential rates are below the national average and TVA programs help consumers use energy wisely.
• TVA expands its facilities to meet rising demand while keeping rates affordable.
  • In 2007, Browns Ferry Nuclear Unit 1 became the first U.S. nuclear unit brought online in the 21st century.
  • TVA is finishing construction of Watts Bar Nuclear Unit 2, expected to enter service by 2013.
  • The TVA Board has approved construction of an 880-megawatt gas-fired power plant in northeast Tennessee.
  • In October 2007, TVA submitted an application for two new nuclear plants at Bellefonte. TVA also is studying completion of Units 1 and 2 as a potential option for Bellefonte.

Environment

River and land management

• TVA operates a system of 49 dams and reservoirs on the 652-mile-long Tennessee River and its tributaries and manages 293,000 acres of public land.
• TVA manages the river system as an integrated unit to provide a wide range of benefits.  These include year-round navigation, reduced flood damage, economical electrical power, recreational opportunities, improved water quality, and a reliable supply of water to cool power plants and meet municipal and industrial needs.
• Barges on the Tennessee River carry some 50 million tons of goods annually, saving industries about $500 million in freight charges compared with shipping by other means.  Rail users save, too, because railroads need to keep rates low to compete with water transportation. This leads to lower prices for consumer goods, fewer trucks on our highways, and cleaner air in our region.
• TVA operates its 34 flood control dams as a unified system to prevent, in a typical weather year, an estimated $240 million in flood damage in the Tennessee Valley and along the Mississippi and Ohio rivers.

Air quality

• TVA continues to work aggressively to further improve air quality in the region.  When all current clean air projects are completed, TVA will have invested $5.5 billion in capital from 1977 through 2010 to reduce emissions from its coal-fired power plants.
• TVA has installed various emission controls on all 59 coal-fired units, including selective catalytic reduction technology on 21 of its units to reduce nitrogen-oxide emissions.
• TVA has reduced sulfur-dioxide emissions by 84 percent since 1977 and has reduced nitrogen-oxide emissions during the summer ozone season by 82 percent since 1995.

Economic Development

In 2008 TVA’s economic development efforts helped attract or retain more than 41,000 jobs and leveraged nearly $5.5 billion in capital investment. 

• TVA provides state and local governments across the Valley with annual tax-equivalent payments that help support education, road construction, and other vital community needs.  
• TVA paid state and local governments more than $450 million in lieu of taxes in 2008, an increase of $75 million from the previous year.
• TVA has made more than $2.5 billion in tax-equivalent payments during the past seven years and expects to pay more than $490 million in 2009.
• TVA offers an array of services and financial resources, including capital investment loans for new and growing businesses, site-selection assistance, and small- and minority-business support.

 

Page Updated June 24, 2009