TVA's 2020 vision has sharper focus

TVA's 2020 vision has sharper focus
25-year plan sees conservation in future

By Randall Higgins
The Chattanooga Times

After nearly two years of study, TVA finished an energy plan Wednesday that will guide it for the next 25 years.

After receiving more than 3,300 public comments, the final version of "Energy Vision 2020" signed by the TVA board of directors includes provisions for more energy conservation than the draft plan they received several months ago.

"After the board saw the draft plan and heard the public comments, they made these changes," said TVA representative Barbara Martocci.

The final plan must still be approved by the board at a public meeting after 30 days.

"The plan was obsolete six months into the process," said Steve Smith, a leader of the Tennessee Valley Energy Reform Coalition.

Smith was a member of the committee appointed by TVA to come up with the quarter-century guidelines. He attended public meetings across the Tennessee Valley and became a critic of the process.

TVA's definition of conservation, Smith said, includes getting customers to buy more-efficient electric appliances, including heat pumps. If that is where the extra 750 megawatts is coming from, he said, it is not really conservation.

"One of the criticisms we heard over and over," Smith said, "was TVA is not specific enough." So when it comes to wind power and biomass generation, he asked, "What do you mean by investigate?"

Changing the draft plan is commendable, Smith said, but he wanted to know if TVA money is committed as well.

"The information in this plan has given the board choices to supply power with the least amount of risk and cost while ensuring environmental quality and sustainable economic development," said TVA Chairman Craven Crowell.

The plan also calls for TVA to use what the industry calls option purchase agreements: agreements to buy power from a supplier, if and when it is needed. The first such agreement was signed last week with Enron Capital and Trade Resources, a Houston power marketer.

Option purchase agreements, Crowell said, "are just one way TVA will supply electricity to its customers" without the expense of building new generating plants.

The plan, Crowell said, "has given us the flexibility to react to market conditions and remain competitive while being at the forefront of utility industry technology."

Next 25 years
Key provisions in Energy Vision 2020, TVA's energy plan for the next 25 years, include:

• Converting the unfinished Bellefonte Nuclear Plant to another fuel if a nuclear partner cannot be found to complete it.
• Look for sites for generating plants using new technologies.
• Continue to modernize hydro power plants.
• Buying up to 3,000 megawatts of power through option purchase agreements for the years 1998-2002.
• Putting Watts Bar Nuclear Plant's unit 2 in mothballs.
• Investigating the possibility of a wind power project in the TVA area.
• Investigating the possibility of a biomass facility that uses wood waste or wood crops.
• Controlling demand for electricity to save up to 2,200 megawatts by 2010.