Jolting year for electric company

CRYSTAL RIVER — Progress Energy Florida had a few shocks in 2010.

Chronicle file

The Progress Energy facility in Crystal River has seen many changes in the past year. More changes are expected in the coming year.

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Early in January, Progress Energy, which owns PEF, announced it was in merger talks with Duke Energy that would form the largest electric utility company in the United States.

Also in January, State Sen. Mike Fasano, R-New Port Richey, proposed the repeal of a law that allows utilities to charge for new nuclear plants before they are built. PEF customers discovered in 2009 they were being charged an extra $11.42 a month for the planned Nuclear Plant in Levy County.

In March, PEF announced Crystal River nuclear unit 3 would be repaired and back in service in April. The nuclear unit was shut down Sept. 26, 2009, for a planned refueling outage that included replacement of steam generators in a concrete and steel containment building. When a hole was cut into the containment building wall to remove the old steam generators, staff discovered a separation in the concrete, called a delamination, that required analysis and repair.
The NRC scheduled a public meeting to discuss the resumption of operation. However, the meeting was canceled after PEF found another delamination in the wall in March.

On April 4, PEF notified the NRC it could not estimate a return to service date for the nuclear unit.

As of May 31, Nuclear Electric Insurance Limited (NEIL), PEF’s insurer, had paid $265 million for repairs and replacement power. PEF had spent $214 million on repairs and $375 million on replacement power costs at that point.

In June, PEF said it would repair the delamination in the containment wall and hoped to have the plant in service by 2014. Company officials estimated the repair cost at between $900 million and $1.3 billion.

In July, Fitch Ratings, which offers opinions about investing, revised its ratings outlook for PEF from stable to negative because of the second delamination in the containment wall.
On July 26, PEF reported to the Florida Public Service Commission (PSC), state regulators, containment building acoustic monitors detected a third delamination.

The PSC voted on Nov. 22 to allow PEF to recoup $140 million in additional fuel charges resulting from the Crystal River nuclear unit being offline all year, allowing the utility to raise the customer’s monthly bill by about 3.2 percent as of Jan. 1. A monthly average use of 1,000 kilowatts of power will cost $123.19.

On Dec. 15, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) rejected Duke Energy’s planned acquisition of Progress Energy.

On Dec. 22, the NRC unanimously approved a design that PEF proposes to use for construction of its $20-billion Levy County power plant. The NRC waived the usual 30-day waiting period, so its decision would be effective before January. That moves the utility closer to pouring concrete for safety-related parts of the plant.

Chronicle reporter Chris Van Ormer can be reached at cvanormer@chronicleonline.com or 352-
564-2916.