Investing today for your future.

To meet the challenges of rising fuel costs, concerns about global warming and growing energy demand, we must make investments in our electricity system. The benefits are real – continued reliability, cleaner air, less dependence on foreign fuel, better long-term price stability – but so are the costs.

Progress Energy is constantly working to maintain and improve our 14 Florida power plants and our complex network of nearly 50,000 miles of power lines. Our investments over the past 25 years have improved customer service and reliability, reduced the environmental impacts of providing electricity, and created better, more efficient generating sources. During this time, we were able to keep base rates relatively flat. Our efforts to provide clean, reliable, affordable power have allowed Progress Energy Florida to succeed in delivering operational, financial and performance achievements benefitting our more than 1.6 million customers and the state of Florida. Learn more.

We must continually plan for investments in new infrastructure and technologies to make certain we continue to meet your electricity needs in the future. Planning for needed energy sources and other infrastructure is part of an ongoing cycle that ensures facilities will be in place when they’re needed. Because there is no way to build power plants, roads, schools and other major regional and state projects overnight, these projects must be started years in advance to avoid overcrowding in the classroom, logjam on the highways or extended outages on the electricity grid.

Cleaner, more reliable power for our state.

By investing in the state’s electricity system, we support Florida public policy to reduce emissions by installing clean-air controls on our coal plants, switching to cleaner fuel sources such as natural gas, and increasing the capacity of carbon-free energy at our Crystal River Nuclear Plant. We also fund improvements to our transmission and distribution system that increase reliability and help prevent storm-related outages.

Some recent projects that are helping bring cleaner, more reliable power to our area include:

Crystal River: Upgrading efficiency and reliability

• A $300 million steam generator replacement project is now under way at the Crystal River nuclear unit to ensure continued state-of-the-art performance from the company’s only nuclear generation unit. This unit provides around-the-clock carbon- and emission-free electricity from the lowest cost fuel source currently available. In fact, since nuclear fuel is significantly less expensive than fossil fuels, the continued operation of and improvements to the Crystal River Nuclear Plant have resulted in $600 million in annual fuel-cost savings.

Bartow Plant: Lowering emissions and fuel costs

• Progress Energy Florida recently changed the fuel source at the Bartow Plant from oil to cleaner, more cost-efficient natural gas to satisfy the recommendation by the Governor’s Action Team on Energy and Climate Change. The $800 million improvement project significantly reduces emissions from the site, while saving customers millions of dollars each year in fuel costs. Based on current fuel price estimates, this long-term strategy will save customers $83 million in 2010 and could be higher in subsequent years depending on the price of fuel.

Transmission and Distribution Upgrades: Improving reliability

• Progress Energy Florida has nearly 5,000 miles of transmission lines and more than 44,000 miles of distribution lines, about 43 percent of which are underground. The electricity generated at our 14 power plants flows through this complex system to your home or business, so maintaining these lines is critical to reliable power.
  
  
• Progress Energy Florida is in the process of making critical transmission and distribution system upgrades and operations and maintenance project improvements, many of which are federally mandated. These projects will further harden the system for storms, enhance reliability and ensure customers have safe, reliable power today and far into the future.

In addition, we have programs to help our commercial and industrial customers save energy. Learn more about our large-scale facility energy-efficiency programs here.