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Kilgore updates employees on TVA business
President and Chief Executive Officer Tom Kilgore reviewed fiscal year 2009 and previewed FY 2010 with employees Oct. 8 in a forum in TVA’s Chattanooga office complex.
Kilgore identified what he considers most important for TVA – safety first, then reliability, rates and reputation.
Some of the key points from Kilgore’s presentation included:
- Safety – Most of TVA had a good year for safety.
- Transmission – For the 10th year in a row, TVA achieved 99.999 reliability, making it one of the best, if not the best, in the industry for this metric.
- Rates – TVA continues to be in the best one-third in the country for rates, as evidenced by companies locating in the Tennessee Valley region, including Toyota, Volkswagen, Hemlock Semiconductor and Wacker. TVA’s reliability and competitive rates are major factors attracting new business to the region.
Kilgore said hard spots for the year include power sales that are down 7.5 percent from last year, the ash spill at Kingston Fossil Plant, the North Carolina litigation now in appeal, vacancies on the TVA Board, and declining values in the pension assets and the value of the Nuclear Decommissioning Trust Fund.
Current challenges for TVA include coping with continued lower sales, possible energy legislation and new environmental regulations, and modernizing TVA’s aging fleet of coal-fired plants.
Kilgore also cited several areas in which TVA needs to improve, including financial discipline, proactive communication, managing risk, doing jobs right the first time, improving culture, solving problems and acting quickly.
Applications available for TVA scholarships
Completed applications due by Jan. 12, 2010
Applications for TVA Employee Dependent Scholarships are now available on InsideNet. Applicants must be a graduating high-school senior with a minimum grade-point average of 3.0. Applicants also must be the dependent child of a TVA employee who has at least one year of employment service and is not a vice president or above.
Scholarships must be applied to an accredited two- or four-year college or university in the United States. Children of TVA retirees are not eligible to participate.
Up to 16 scholarships will be awarded. Selection of scholarship recipients is based on a student’s declared college major being consistent with TVA’s workforce-development needs, as well as on the student’s high-school grade-point average, ACT/SAT test scores, participation in school and community activities, honors, work experience and a statement of goals.
More information, along with a downloadable application, is available on the scholarship-application site on InsideNet. Those who cannot readily access InsideNet can call the TVA Service Center at 1-888-275-8094 (toll-free), 751-8800 (Chattanooga), 632-8800 (Knoxville) or 1-800-848-0298 (TDD/TTY-TN Relay Service).
Click on fun!
tvakids.com is redesigned and ready for you.
How do you get to school? Do your parents drive or ride a bike to work? How many bags of garbage do you throw away each week?
These are a few of the questions that kids — and adults — can answer to find out the size of their carbon footprint and their impact on the environment. The new design of TVA’s Web site for kids, www.tvakids.com, features a carbon footprint calculator. The calculator also provides curriculum links for teachers and parents.
Other changes on the site include an aerial video tour of the Tennessee Valley, allowing users to see TVA generating sites, businesses and city skylines from a birds-eye perspective.
Teachers and students also can access animations and diagrams of how TVA makes electricity. To help with those upcoming science-fair projects, tvakids.com also features a list of helpful links to project ideas.