The Tennessee Valley Authority earned only about a third as much in net income this spring as it did a year ago due to milder weather and energy efficiency cutting into power usage this year and additional write offs for TVA’s coal ash cleanup and shuttered power plants reducing income.
But the federal utility is still continuing to pay down its debt and is on pace to earn more than $1 billion in the current fiscal year for the fourth time in the past five years.
TVA said today that it earned $165 million in net income on quarterly revenues in the April-June period on nearly $2.6 billion in revenues. In the same period a year ago, TVA earned $470 million on $2.7 billion in revenues.
Net income for the nine months ended June 30, 2019, was $829 million, down 32 percent from net income of $1.2 billion for the same period of fiscal year 2018.
TVA’s fuel and purchased power expense was 3 percent lower than the nine-month period ended June 30, 2018, driven by a $114 million decrease in fuel expense. Lower commodity prices and significantly more hydroelectric generation from increased rainfall helped drive fuel expense down.