On the day Mississippi Power Co. was scheduled to start commercial operation of its Kemper County energy facility, another month’s delay was announced.
The utility, a unit of Atlanta-based Southern Co., revealed the setback in a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing Tuesday, the latest in a series of missed projected deadlines.
The plant, which is running on natural gas, was supposed to go into full operation running on synthesis gas, also known as syngas, by May 2014. It is now scheduled for completion by Feb. 28.
In Tuesday’s filing, Mississippi Power says it has integrated the operation of both of the plant’s gasifiers and was able to produce electricity from syngas in both its combustion turbines on Jan. 29.
However, the utility says the plant must undergo an outage of about one week to repair and make modifications “to further improve the plant’s ability to achieve sustained operations sufficient to support placing the plant in service for customers.”
As in previous filings, Mississippi Power estimates that missing its latest deadline would cost about $25 million to $35 million per month. This latest delay pushes the plant’s price tag to almost $7.1 billion. Additional costs may also be required if any further equipment or design issues emerge, the utility says.
As for what the public pays, there is a $2.88 billion cap on what Mississippi Power rate payers can pay for the plant. Any increase beyond that depends on Mississippi Public Service Commission approval.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
Republish this article
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
- Look for the "Republish This Story" button underneath each story. To republish online, simply click the button, copy the html code and paste into your Content Management System (CMS).
- Editorial cartoons and photo essays are not included under the Creative Commons license and therefore do not have the "Republish This Story" button option. To learn more about our cartoon syndication services, click here.
- You can’t edit our stories, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style.
- You can’t sell or syndicate our stories.
- Any web site our stories appear on must include a contact for your organization.
- If you share our stories on social media, please tag us in your posts using @MSTODAYnews on Facebook and @MSTODAYnews on Twitter.
- You have to credit Mississippi Today. We prefer “Author Name, Mississippi Today” in the byline. If you’re not able to add the byline, please include a line at the top of the story that reads: “This story was originally published by Mississippi Today” and include our website, mississippitoday.org.
- You can’t edit our stories, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style.
- You cannot republish our editorial cartoons, photographs, illustrations or graphics without specific permission (contact our managing editor Kayleigh Skinner for more information). To learn more about our cartoon syndication services, click here.
- Our stories may appear on pages with ads, but not ads specifically sold against our stories.
- You can’t sell or syndicate our stories.
- You can only publish select stories individually — not as a collection.
- Any web site our stories appear on must include a contact for your organization.
- If you share our stories on social media, please tag us in your posts using @MSTODAYnews on Facebook and @MSTODAYnews on Twitter.