Reliability, Resilience and Affordability
Southern Company is focused on maintaining and developing robust and resilient energy infrastructure. As we work across the company to deliver energy to customers every day and enable a net-zero future, we aim to maintain safety, reliability, resilience and affordability. We are committed to balancing these factors to help ensure we meet the rapidly increasing energy demand in our Southeastern electric service territory, which is projected to grow at an unprecedented rate due to population growth, expanded manufacturing, artificial intelligence-related computing needs and data centers.
Serve Our Customers
Reliable energy is essential and powers the economy. We are at the forefront of industry-leading innovation and are making smart investments to help ensure reliable and resilient service for those we are privileged to serve. Southern Company and our electric and natural gas subsidiaries are making substantial investments in projects to minimize customer disruption, including during extreme conditions. Our investment strategies are informed by stakeholder input, scenario-based integrated resource planning processes and reviews by our state regulators.
- Our plans focus on upgrading transmission and distribution infrastructure across the power grid to improve the reliability and efficiency of our system and decrease the frequency and length of service disruptions.
- Our system planning efforts currently indicate that an array of electric-generating resources will be needed to meet growing electric demand in our service territories. We expect to meet this demand through an increase in renewable, zero-carbon and storage resources and the continued use of natural gas-fired generation, while reducing reliance on coal-fired generating assets.
- We take a proactive approach to infrastructure modernization and leak detection and repair for our pipeline distribution system.
- As we prepare for a new energy future, we routinely assess emerging technologies that can help us better serve customers while reducing our carbon footprint and maintaining affordability.
Investing in Reliability and Resilience - Impact and Results
To meet customers’ future energy needs, our electric utilities are constructing new generating facilities consistent with our net-zero goals and plan to invest in grid improvement projects that include capital maintenance and infrastructure replacement, storm hardening, cyber and physical security and undergrounding, as well as new generation and compliance investments. Many of these transmission and distribution projects, along with the continued deployment of grid-enhancing technologies, where applicable, are expected to help facilitate the addition of zero-carbon resources.
- ·Proactive storm-hardening measures like upgrading thousands of wooden poles to concrete or steel help Mississippi Power achieve reliability that is among the best in the industry.
- ·Under its grid investment plan, over the past three years Georgia Power has installed approximately 1,500 smart devices, hardened 21,000 utility poles and replaced 400 miles of overhead conductors with underground conductors. This work ultimately improved reliability for over 160,000 customers.
- Alabama Power, Georgia Power and Mississippi Power are building a stronger, more resilient grid by using smart technology. Smart technology allows our electric utilities to restore service faster and, in some cases, avoids outages altogether. By the end of 2023, nearly 80% of customers across our three retail electric utilities were on a self-healing network.
For our gas utilities, we continuously monitor and conduct regular inspections of our systems to help ensure safety, security, reliability and resiliency, even under times of stress – sustainability is not separate but an extension of these core objectives. Our proactive infrastructure modernization and leak detection and repair efforts are a critical step toward reaching net zero by 2050.
- Atlanta Gas Light, Chattanooga Gas, Nicor Gas and Virginia Natural Gas continuously monitor and conduct inspections of their systems to help ensure safety, security, reliability and resilience.
- As of the end of 2023, Southern Company Gas’ natural gas distribution system replaced or retired all known cast or wrought iron steel, and only 0.23% of unprotected steel main remained. Pipeline replacement is recognized today as having the single most significant impact on methane emissions reductions in the natural gas industry’s distribution segment.
- Our natural gas utilities are expanding or piloting advanced technologies, including drones, satellites, stationary monitors and artificial intelligence-enabled cloud computing platforms, to better detect leaks and measure emissions.
Leadership & Partnership
For the second consecutive year, Georgia Power was ranked number one for residential customer satisfaction among Large Utilities in the South by J.D. Power in its 2023 Electric Utility Residential Customer Satisfaction StudySM.
"From the mountains of north Georgia to the coast, our teams work around the clock to deliver safe, clean, reliable and affordable electric service to the homes of millions of Georgians," said Bentina Terry, senior vice president of Customer Strategy & Solutions for Georgia Power. "The key to our success continues to be a focus on exceeding our customers' expectations, evolving our offerings to meet the changing needs of our customers across every aspect of our business, and making our communities better by fulfilling our longstanding mission to be A Citizen Wherever We Serve. This recognition by J.D. Power celebrates all of our employees who are champions for our customers, every day, in every decision they make.”
-Bentina Terry
UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Alignment
Southern Company has mapped our corporate sustainability priorities to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals framework, indicating our alignment with a sustainable future.
