Hasn't Progress Energy Florida built generation recently?

Yes. Over the last 20 years, Progress Energy Florida has added a number of generation facilities in various locations around its service area to keep up with growth in customer demand. The type of generation added since the mid-1980s has been largely what is referred to as "intermediate" and "peaking" plants, mostly fueled by natural gas.

For example, the Hines Energy Complex in Polk County, whose first unit began commercial operation in 1999, now has four operating units capable of producing about 2,000 megawatts of electricity.  The fourth unit became operational on December 1, 2007.  Combined-cycle, gas-fueled technology is generally considered an intermediate plant, though it also can operate as baseload.

How do the generation types differ?

There are three main types of large-scale electricity generation:

Baseload plants typically run 90 to 100 percent of the time to meet the basic, constant customer demand every hour of every day (these are usually nuclear or coal-fired plants because those fuel sources are most cost-efficient)

Intermediate plants generally run about 50-60 percent of the time to meet customer electricity demand that exceeds the basic, continuous level during the course of the day (these are usually natural gas-fired combined-cycle turbines, coal- or oil-fired plants)

Peaking plants generally run less than 10 percent of the time to meet relatively short periods of heightened customer demand on the hottest and coldest days (these are usually natural gas- or oil-fueled combustion turbines that can cycle on and off quickly to stay in sync with customer demand fluctuations).

Progress Energy Florida must continually evaluate needs with each type of generation to ensure the company's ability to meet growing customer electricity demand reliably and efficiently. Other means of meeting customer demand include power purchases and demand-side management programs. The continuous evaluation of resource needs indicates the necessity of adding new baseload generation.