Reliability and Customer Satisfaction

Key Performance Indicators
Among electric utilities, Southern Company maintains one of the highest reliability records - 99.95 percent - in the nation.

American Customer Satisfaction Index
We have been the highest-scoring electric utility in customer satisfaction in the American Customer Satisfaction Index for the past five years.

Click to enlarge and view as PDF. (Online charts updated through 2006.)

J.D. Power and Associates Electric Utility Residential and Business Customer Satisfaction Study - Southern Region

J.D. Power quality and satisfaction measurements are based on actual customer responses. Overall customer satisfaction is based on performance in six factors: power quality and reliability; customer service; company image; billing and payment; price, and communications.

Click to enlarge and view as PDF. (Online charts updated through 2006.)

Peak Season Equivalent Forced Outage Rate
Equivalent Forced Outage Rate indicates generation unit unavailability during times when demand is highest and is calculated from May 1 through September 30. Lower rates are better.

For comparison (as compiled by the North American Electric Reliability Council, excluding nuclear generation and adjusted for catastrophic damage caused by hurricanes), the Equivalent Forced Outage Rate for companies larger than 5,000 MW, like ours, run at about six to eight percent.

Click to enlarge and view as PDF. (Online charts updated through 2006.)

Transmission Reliability
Southern Company calculates transmission reliability by measuring the duration and frequency of interruptions. Indices are calculated on interruptions greater than five minutes. Scheduled or planned outages, named storms, customer-caused outages, and trouble attributable to other utilities are excluded from the indices.

Financial Performance
Southern Company is publicly traded (NYSE: SO) with $39.9 billion in assets and more than 500,000 shareholders. We have paid a dividend to shareholders for 236 consecutive quarters, dating from 1948 through October 2006.

Investing to Meet Demand
We’re in the first year of a three-year, $13.6 billion capital expansion, the largest in our company’s history. The majority of this investment will be used to upgrade and expand our transmission and distribution infrastructure to meet growing demand, and to add new environmental equipment at our coal plants to help ensure that we generate the cleanest electricity possible, at the lowest price possible. While such investments require us to increase our prices, the reality is that our customers still pay electricity prices that are well below the national average.