The past year has been the best ever for keeping the lights on in the Tennessee Valley.
During fiscal 2020, the Tennessee Valley Authority cut its power outages and interruptions by more than 20% from the previous record year in 2018 to achieve the most reliable power delivery in the utility’s 87-year history. On average, TVA delivered the electricity it generates during the past year with only 2.72 minutes of interruptions for the entire 12-month period, officials said Wednesday.
“We have had a positive trend in power reliability over the past couple of decades with over 25 years of delivering power with 99.999% reliability,” said Aaron Melda, vice president of transmission operations and power supply for TVA. “This record is the result of years of work by everyone in transmission, with support and collaboration from many others from across the fleet.”
Melda said power interruptions are only about 10% of what they were when TVA began closely monitoring such data in 1982. Over time, TVA has upgraded network monitoring and controls, improved transmission lines and limited vegetation around its facilities and the utility has begun to install over 2,700 miles of fiber optic lines to improve data and controls over how TVA power is dispatched and delivered.
To further improve its reliability, TVA is spending more than $300 million to build a new systems operations center in rural Meigs County and make other system upgrades as part of an upgrade that TVA officials have dubbed “Grid 2023.” Despite initial opposition from neighboring residents, TVA has begun laying the foundation for the new facility on more than 150 acres near Gunstocker Creek in Georgetown to replace the power control center now located in the basement of TVA’s downtown Chattanooga Office Complex.