MEAG Power on July 19 announced the completion of a limited public debt offering, raising $619 million, which will fund SPVJ’s share of the anticipated completion costs related to the Vogtle Units 3 & 4 Project near Waynesboro, Ga. SPVJ is a wholly-owned affiliate of MEAG Power.
The output related to SPVJ’s ownership share is the subject of a 20-year power purchase agreement between MEAG Power, as seller, and Florida-based public power JEA, as purchaser.
Plant Vogtle Units 3 & 4 consists of two 1,100 megawatt Westinghouse AP1000 nuclear reactors being constructed in Burke County, Ga. The two new nuclear reactors at Vogtle will supplement the two existing reactor units at the site.
MEAG Power owns 22.7 percent of Plant Vogtle Units 1&2, as well as Units 3&4. MEAG Power’s co-owners in the Vogtle expansion project are Georgia Power (45.7 percent), Oglethorpe Power (30.0 percent) and Dalton Utilities (1.6 percent).
“We’re pleased to have reached this significant milestone in the financing of the plant expansion,” said Jim Fuller, MEAG Power’s President and CEO, in a news release.
“We concluded that a limited public offering would be an optimal means to access the capital markets both because of the availability of low-cost financing and because it would involve only sophisticated investors capable of accurately assessing the viability of the offering,” Fuller said.
“We were particularly pleased that this offering was over-subscribed by the investment community reflecting strong support for the financial viability of the Vogtle Project,” Fuller said.
DOE reached financial close for additional Vogtle loan guarantees earlier this year
Secretary of Energy Rick Perry in March announced that the Department of Energy had reached financial close for up to $3.7 billion in additional guarantees of loans to finance the continued construction of Vogtle Units 3 and 4. The new units will be the nation's first new nuclear units in 30 years.
The DOE issued guarantees of loans for the following Vogtle owners: up to $1.67 billion to Georgia Power Company; up to $1.6 billion to Oglethorpe Power; and up to $415 million to three subsidiaries of MEAG Power.
The DOE had previously announced conditional commitments for the additional $3.7 billion in loan guarantees in September 2017.
The DOE will now guarantee a total of up to $12 billion in loans for the project, including existing guarantees of up to $8.3 billion in loans to Georgia Power, Oglethorpe Power and the MEAG Power subsidiaries provided in 2014 and 2015.
Georgia-based MEAG Power is a nonprofit, statewide generation and transmission joint action agency. MEAG Power has over $9 billion in assets, delivered 10.6 million megawatt-hours of energy in 2014, and owns more than 1,300 miles of high-voltage transmission lines and nearly 200 substations.
