Company History
Progress Energy began in the early 1890’s, and ironically it
began because of ice. The St.
Petersburg Ice Company delivered ice to its customers for food preservation,
but in 1896, the company offered to provide electricity from its generator to
power 30 downtown streetlights during the night time hours. In 1899, the company, renamed St. Petersburg
Electric & Power, began providing electricity throughout the entire city. Over the next century the company grew to be
the second largest provider of electricity in Florida.
Progress Energy is a Fortune 250 diversified energy
company. They have 24,000 megawatts of
generation capacity and $9 billion in annual revenues. Progress Energy serves approximately 2.9
million customers in North Carolina, South Carolina, and Florida. They received the Carolina Star Award in
October of 2000 from the North Carolina Department of Labor. The award is modeled after the Occupational Safety and
Health Administration's (OSHA) national Star Award, OSHA's most prestigious
safety designation. The Carolina Star
has been awarded to fewer than 30 facilities statewide, and they are one of
only three utilities in the country to receive a star designation on either the
state or federal level.
Production And Transmission
As an energy provider, Progress Energy is in the service
sector, though it does technically produce energy, it is not a tangible
good. Progress Fuels owns and operates
Progress Energy’s fuel extraction, manufacturing and delivery operations. This
includes coal mining, synthetic fuel operations and fuel transmission
facilities at several sites in Virginia, West Virginia and Kentucky.
Producing electricity is simply a matter of converting
energy which Progress Energy does using coal, nuclear, natural gas/oil and
hydroelectric plants.
To start the process, the natural resources must first be
gathered. For the fossil-fueled plants,
which burn oil, coal or gas, these items are purchased and then shipped to each
plant. In some instances, natural coal
is shipped using railway systems that can lead to bottlenecks in the even that
the rail tracks become impassable. This
does happen due to unforeseeable weather problems like snow and ice, leading to
production back-ups. For the nuclear-fueled
generating plant, uranium is used instead of fossil fuels, so the main resource
is uranium. Finally, the hydroelectric
plants are run by water, so they are built close to powerful lakes, rivers or
streams so delivery of the key supplies is non-existent.
Once the energy has been converted to usable electricity, it
is transmitted through ‘high-voltage transmission lines’ which carry it to the
consumers. These lines are part of a
larger grid of many transmission lines crisscrossing the state. In North Carolina, the grid is called VACAR
(Virginia/Carolina Grid). Multiple
power suppliers throughout Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina are all
connected to the same grid, which means they can share power lines. Each individual company has their own
private lines, though the grid keeps them connected to other company lines in
case someone is unable to provide for their customer needs. In case of such an event, one company can
call another for help, and since the lines are connected, this happens very
quickly. However, it does mean
customers lacking electricity while an employee calls another to ask for
help. One way of eliminating this
bottleneck is to create an automatic system between corporations so that
immediately after customers lose power, there is another company picking up the
slack.