New Vogtle nuclear reactor now online, completing expansion
The second new nuclear unit at Plant Vogtle has entered commercial service, Georgia Power announced Monday, marking the end of the expansion of the nuclear power plant near Augusta, beset by years of delays and cost overruns.
The new Vogtle units are the first new commercial reactors built from scratch in the U.S. in more than three decades.
With the second unit now online, known as Unit 4, the two reactors combined will produce enough electricity to power 1million homes, without adding heat-trapping carbon pollution to the atmosphere. The first new unit, Unit 3, has been in service since last July, joining the original two Vogtle reactors, which have been producing electricity since the late 1980s.
The addition of the two new units makes Plant Vogtle the country’s largest generator of carbonfree electricity, Georgia Power says.
Both new Vogtle units were dogged by construction quality issues and other problems, and ultimately reached completion roughly seven years later than initially forecast. Their total price tag also blew past the original cost estimate of $14 billion to around $35 billion.
Most of Georgia Power’s portion of those costs have – and will continue to – come out of the pockets of Georgia Power customers.
In a statement, Georgia Power president and CEO Kim Greene praised the unit’s co-owners and regulators at the Georgia Public Service Commission,
who greenlit the project and repeatedly voted to continue construction, despite skyrocketing costs. Georgia Power owns the largest share in the Vogtle expansion with 45.7%, followed by Oglethorpe Power (30%), the Municipal Electric Authority of Georgia (22.7%) and Dalton Utilities (1.6%).
“The new Vogtle units are a key piece of our strategy to meet the energy needs of our customers not only tomorrow, but 20 years from now,” Greene said.
Before the first new unit produced any electricity, the average Georgia Power residential customer had already paid about $1,000 over the last decade-plus in monthly bill fees to cover the project’s financing.
Late last year, state regulators voted to approve a deal to pass $7.56 billion of Vogtle’s construction costs on to the company’s ratepayers. Georgia Power and shareholders of its parent, Southern Company, will absorb the remaining $2.63 billion of the project’s construction costs.
As a result, the average residential customer using 1,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity a month will seea cumulative increase of $14.38 in their monthly bills. Part of that increase – about $5.42 – kicked in last year after Unit 3 entered service.
Now that Unit 4 is online, the rest – about $9 – will show up on customer bills starting in May.
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