Mississippi Power continues making progress on the completion of the Kemper County energy facility. In July, the project reached its most significant milestone to date when it converted locally mined lignite to syngas.
The production of syngas, using the transport integrated gasification technology or TRIGTM, involved operating the "front end" of the plant and validated the TRIGTM technology works at commercial scale. The power plant portion, or the "back end" of the project, is already in service and has been providing safe, reliable electricity for our customers since August 2014.
As the company continues start-up and commissioning activities at Kemper, Mississippi Power announced today it is revising the facility's scheduled in-service date to Oct. 31, 2016. The one-month extension is needed to make mechanical equipment modifications to the gasifiers' supporting systems, complete the remaining commissioning activities on the syngas clean-up systems and integrate all systems necessary to generate electricity.
The company also revised its cost estimate subject to the cost cap for the Kemper project – since the last monthly report to the Mississippi Public Service Commission – to include an additional $43 million related to the schedule extension and start-up activities, for a total of approximately $81 million recorded for the second quarter of 2016.
All of those costs will be paid by Southern Company and Mississippi Power – not by Mississippi Power customers.
Mississippi Power's analysis of the time needed to complete start-up and commissioning activities will continue until the remaining assets are placed in service.
The Kemper project team continues focusing on starting up and integrating various systems needed to achieve the next major milestone – using the syngas to produce electricity.
Mississippi Power, a subsidiary of Southern Company (NYSE: SO), produces safe, reliable and environmentally responsible energy for more than 186,000 customers in 23 southeast Mississippi counties. Mississippi Power earned the 2015 ReliabilityOneTM Award for outstanding midsize utility for excellence in storm restoration and recovery efforts as well as being a leader in reliability, customer service and safety.