Economic Responsibility
The Southeast is growing faster than any other region in America. Common sense says, more growth requires more energy. With 4.3 million customers covering 120,000 square miles and 42,000 megawatts of generating capacity, Southern Company is a major economic force in the Southeast. We added 55,000 new customers in 2007 as job growth, personal income growth and lower housing costs continued to attract new residents and business to our region.
As the population grows, more homes are built, more businesses open their doors and more office buildings rise out of the ground. This growth equates to increasing electricity demand, and our job is to efficiently meet it.
At Southern Company, we forecast growth and demand well in advance, and we plan appropriately. We know how many employees it will take to get the job done, and we know the skills they need. We know where and when we need to add new generation, and new transmission and distribution equipment. And we plan for those costs.
To keep up with the growing demand in the Southeast and maintain the high level of reliability our customers expect, we plan to add more than 1,900 megawatts over the next three years. That's enough to power more than a half-million homes.
Since 2000, we have invested $8 billion to upgrade and expand our transmission and distribution infrastructure to ensure that we have the means to deliver electricity on demand. And we're investing even more.
Over the next three years we plan to invest $4.1 billion in our transmission and distribution infrastructure to help ensure that we maintain our high level of reliability and keep electricity flowing to increasing number of customers in our region.
At Southern Company, we work hard every minute of every day to meet the growing electricity demands of the Southeast. We're excited about our opportunity to grow along with this region of the country, and we're poised to meet the challenges presented by this growth.
