Every U.S. nuclear plant this year will add an extra layer of emergency equipment to deal with unforeseen natural disasters, Progress Energy Chief Nuclear Officer Jim Scarola said this morning to mark the upcoming anniversary of the Fukushima disaster in Japan.

Scarola is the special liaison for the U.S. nuclear industry's Fukushima response, set up to improve U.S. nuclear plant safety after a 50-foot tsunami disabled coastal reactors in Japan and washed away diesel generators and other emergency equipment, and claimed 19,000 lives from drowning.

"One of the things we set out to do is not to take the stance that it can't happen here," Scarola said of the nation's nuclear leaders. "What we're really concerned about is being able to provide water and energy" to keep safety equipment running during a catastrophic event that causes high death rates and wipes out roads and other infrastructure. 

Progress Energy and Duke Energy this afternoon made their third -- and most expensive -- merger proposal in a bid to win approval from regulators in Raleigh and in Washington.

The two power companies proposed building up to $150 million in transmission lines, including upgrades in the Triangle, in order to expand competition in the Carolinas between wholesale electricity producers. The proposal is intended to address concerns at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in Washington that the merged power company would manipulate market prices of wholesale electricity in the region.

The cost and extent of the concessions will almost certainly require North Carolina regulators to reopen merger proceedings in this state and potentially hold another round of hearings. The extra proceedings will prolong regulatory merger reviews into the summer as regulators and company executives negotiate who will pay for the transmission upgrades.

Progress Energy customers saved an average of $235 a year by switching to solar thermal water heater, representing an average annual savings of 63 percent on the water heater portion of their power bill.

Those are the results Raleigh-based Progress reported this week to the N.C. Utilities Commission to wrap up a pilot project using 150 customers to test the efficiency of solar thermal water heaters. As part of the year-long pilot, Progress contributed $1,000 toward each customer's cost of buying as solar thermal water heater.

The company says that more than 15 percent of electricity used in a typical home is used for heating water. Solar water heaters use the sun as their primary source of energy, with electricity (or natural gas) as a backup.

Solar water heaters are known for their high efficiency performance as well as their high price tags, costing about 10 times to 20 times as much as a conventional water heater. Progress reported that buying and installing the solar water heaters averaged $7,271 per household, ranging from $4,000 to $12,375 per home.

Homeowners rarely pay the full price, however. In North Carolina, solar water heaters qualify for a 30 percent federal tax incentive and a 35 percent state tax credit (up to $1,400), which would cut the cost by about half.

Progress Energy wants to offer customers a new bill payment option that goes way back to the early days of rural electric companies and is expected to save a typical household more than $100 a year.

The method known as pre-paid billing is available from other industries, such as wireless service providers, but hasn't been offered by most power companies in decades, although it is still offered by some rural electric cooperatives. Instead of paying after the product (i.e., electricity) is used, the customer would pay in advance.

But the customer would lose service if the account runs out of money and more deposits aren't made. However, reconnecting would not include the usual $30 fee in North Carolina or the $15 fee in South Carolina.

Raleigh-based Progress hopes to offer the experimental payment method to just 1,000 customers in the Carolinas this year, once the program is approved by the N.C. Utilities Commission. Progress notes in its filing that savings up of 10 percent to 15 percent can be expected, based on experiences with similar programs in other parts of the country.

Progress Energy reported weakening electricity sales for what was to be the Raleigh-based power company's last year of independent operation before a planned merger with Duke Energy in Charlotte.

The revenues and earnings released this morning are a prelude to conference calls with Wall Street analysts and investors who will undoubtedly seek updates on the status of the delayed $26 billion merger. Duke's conference call is scheduled at 10 a.m. today and Progress will update Wall Street at 2 p.m.

Duke's CEO Jim Rogers told our sister paper, The Charlotte Obsever, that the companies expect to file their revisions within a week. The two North Carolina electric utilities were expected to file their merger revisions as early as last month and warned then that the deal could be delayed by six months as the revisions make their way through complex regulatory reviews.

Sixteen Greenpeace activists were arrested today after they broke into a Progress Energy power plant complex in Asheville before dawn to protest the destruction and damage caused by coal-burning power plants.

Some of the protesters, equipped with harnesses and climbing gear, scaled equipment and were dangling from nets, according to local news coverage.

They were arrested after unfurling a banner 400 feet above the ground on a smoke stack that read: "Duke Energy: The climate needs real Progress."

"They're all experienced climbers," said Greenpeace spokeswoman Keiller MacDuff. "Non-violent civil disobedience of this type does bear some inherent risk, which is why it's so courageous of these activists to put themselves in these positions."

MacDuff said Greenpeace is highlighting the environmental damage caused by Raleigh-based Progress because the company is in the midst of a corporate merger with Charlotte-based Duke Energy, which will result in the largest electric utility in the country.

Nuclear safety officials have concluded that a fluke mishap last year at Progress Energy's Brunswick nuclear plant near Wilmington was caused by the lack of worker qualification for more than a decade.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission issued its preliminary findings yesterday, but the federal safety agency is continuing its investigation to determine the safety significance of the incident.

The unusual mishap that shut down the Brunswick Unit 2 reactor last November may be the only such incident in U.S. nuclear history.
 

Progress Energy's trouble-prone H.B. Robinson nuclear plant in South Carolina declared an emergency after a fire was reported at the facility.

The Robinson plant was in shutdown mode for a refueling outage Monday evening when the electrical fire occurred in a control cabinet of a polar crane, a heavy-duty crane with a bridge and trolley system. There were no injuries reported.

The nuclear plant is coming off a period of troubled performance during which it experienced four unplanned shutdowns, two electrical fires and a power failure between 2009 and 2010.

Last year the Nuclear Regulatory Commission removed the Robinson plant off the nation's worst-performers list after a period of trouble-free performance.

Progress Energy agreed to a $288 million refund for its Florida customers as part of a rate settlement announced Friday with that state's regulators.

The refund reflects the extra costs Progress incurred to generate or buy electricity to replace the output of the disabled Crystal River nuclear reactor, which has been shut down for more than two years because of damage caused during maintenance.

Raleigh-based Progress will record pretax costs of $288 million for the fourth quarter, which is expected to trim 59 cents from that quarter's earnings, Bloomberg News reported. Progress will announce more details when it issues earnings on Feb. 16.

The Florida rate refund will largely offset a rate increase planned for Florida customers, bringing down the increase to about 4 percent, or nearly $5 a month for a typical household.

The Florida rate case has no effect on customers in the Carolinas, but the $288 million write-down will affect all investors.

Duke Energy and Progress Energy have delayed the closing date of their corporate merger as the two North Carolina electric companies face tough regulatory scrutiny of their proposed $26 billion deal.

In a memo to employees issued today, the companies said the earliest their merger could now close is May or June. Just last month, Charlotte-based Duke and Raleigh-based Progress predicted they could finish their merger as soon as March.

The update is the latest in a series of developments that indicate the merger is turning out to be far more complicated than company executives had expected.

"Based on the time needed for our analysis and the estimated time for regulatory reviews and approvals, we believe the earliest the merger could close is May or June," Progress Senior Vice President Paul Sims wrote to employees.