Georgia Power Co. is holding to it most recent budget and schedule for the new reactors under construction at its Vogtle plant, according to the utility’s latest semiannual progress report filed with Georgia regulators.
When it last made the formal filing with the Georgia Public Service Commission, the Southern Co. subsidiary utility said it was 18 months behind due to contractors missing deadlines. The two new Westinghouse AP-1000 reactors are now about 60 percent complete, Georgia Power spokesman John O’Brien said.
“The nuclear project in Georgia is going great,” Southern Co. CEO Thomas Fanning told CNBC last week. “In fact, from when that project was approved to where we are now, costs to customers have actually been coming down.”
Initially, Fanning said the projected completion of Vogtle units 3 and 4 would boost customer bills about 12 percent to absorb the higher capital costs for the new nuclear units. “Now, we believe that will be between 6 and 8 percent,” he said.
The capital and financing costs for Georgia Power’s 45.7 percent ownership of Vogtle remain at around $7.5 billion. That expense would put the capital cost for Dalton Utilities’ 1.6 percent share of Vogtle at more than $425 million.
Georgia Power says the first of the new reactors, Vogtle unit 3, will be running in June 2019, with the second reactor to follow a year later.