New Nuclear – Southern Company is on schedule to be the first U.S. utility in more than 30 years to build new nuclear-powered generation. The project will add two new units with more than 2,200 megawatts of capacity at Plant Vogtle in Georgia, with startups planned for 2016 and 2017. Plant Vogtle’s two existing units have more than 2,400 megawatts of capacity. The additional units are expected to create approximately 3,500 jobs during construction and an additional 800 permanent jobs when the units begin operation. Jim Williams (pictured) is the site support manager helping to oversee construction of the two new units.

SMART ENERGY

What’s SMART about Southern Company?

Our drive to find cutting-edge technologies that will help grow our clean, reliable, affordable energy supply and our energy efficiency initiatives.

Southern Company believes the key to meeting our growing energy demand is a broad portfolio of available energy resources, including energy efficiency, renewable energy, clean coal, new nuclear, natural gas, and hydro. We are aggressively working to reduce the inefficient use of energy through our efficiency and conservation programs. We have dozens of research projects under way as we explore and develop renewable energy options, including biomass, solar, wind, geothermal, and landfill gas. We are researching more economical ways to produce cleaner energy at the National Carbon Capture Center in Wilsonville, Ala., and at our world-renowned Mercury Research Center in Pensacola, Fla. We’re an industry leader in the research and development of clean-coal technologies. Pending final approval, we plan to begin construction this year on a Mississippi plant that will produce energy using an advanced coal-gasification technology that we helped to develop. We are the first utility in the nation to begin early site work on new nuclear generation. We are constructing two new nuclear units at our Vogtle plant in Georgia, and earlier this year we received approval for a conditional loan guarantee totaling approximately $3.4 billion for this project. We are working on several projects to promote distributed generation – small-scale sources of generation located near the areas they serve – including energy storage and renewable energy. In the future, distributed generation is expected to play a role in helping our company and our industry meet demand and reduce the need for long-distance transmission infrastructure. As you can see, we are delivering a diverse portfolio of smarter, cleaner energy sources.