The Tennessee Valley Authority office complex is shown in
downtown Chattanooga.While overall electric rates have gone up in the past year, the Tennessee Valley Authority has cut the average bill for its biggest industrial customers by an average 6.8 percent.
The industrial power savings have come through cheaper fuel and a variety of incentive programs TVA created a couple of years ago to help it regain its competitive standing and attract more jobs to the Tennessee Valley. TVA is on pace this year for a record high of business investment and job creation, which utility officials say was boosted by new industrial incentives adopted two years ago.
To sustain such growth, TVA is preparing to launch a major pricing study to revamp its charges for electricity by fiscal 2016.
“We recognized a couple of years ago that our industrial rates were not as competitive as what we would like them to be so we made some changes that made a real difference for a lot of businesses,” said Gary Harris, TVA’s vice president of industrial marketing and services. “The idea behind these programs is that we wanted to recognize and give those companies that are willing to make a commitment to the valley for the long term an extra incentive to stay or to come here and invest.”
Harris said by keeping and increasing businesses in the Valley, the incentives helped to create more jobs and to spread TVA’s costs over a bigger base. Although TVA lost its largest customer last year when U.S. Enrichment Corp. shut down its uranium enrichment plant in Paducah, Ky., TVA has boosted other business investment in its 7-state region this year by more than 40 percent over last year’s total.