Southern Company's Approach Reliability, Resilience, and Affordability
Originally published in Southern Company's 2021 Corporate Responsibility Executive Summary Report
A reliable, resilient and affordable energy system is central not only to our company and mission, but also to the future of energy. Southern Company is dedicated to delivering reliable and affordable energy to our customers and communities.
- Southern Company is focused on modernizing our infrastructure to improve system reliability and resilience and working to ensure protections are in place to minimize physical risks to our energy systems
- Continued innovation will be required – and is underway – to support future reliability and resilience needs in a carbon-constrained world
- Southern Company is committed to providing clean, safe, reliable and affordable energy for our customers
Southern Company is a leading participant in EPRI’s Climate READi: Power Resilience and Adaptation initiative
As 1-in-50 or 1-in-100-year extreme events of the past increase in frequency, and society increasingly depends on electricity, EPRI is strengthening the power sector’s collective approach to managing climate risk to the power system. EPRI’s collaborative model will convene the global thought leaders and scientific researchers necessary to build an informed and consistent approach. The framework will enable energy companies, regulators and other stakeholders to use science-informed insights in a more consistent way to better understand, plan for and disclose future global power system challenges arising from the changing environment.
Spotlight: Reliability and Resilience
Increases in severe weather, changing customer preferences and advancements in technology continue to transform our world and the way we provide energy to those we serve. We understand that having reliable energy is essential, which is why we are at the forefront of industry-leading innovation and are focused on making smart investments to provide reliable and resilient service to our customers. We do this by upgrading and enhancing our infrastructure, protecting electric and natural gas infrastructure from physical and cyber-threats, reducing our GHG emissions, and deploying distributed generation solutions, among other initiatives. We are always preparing for the future.
As we transition to cleaner fuel sources, Southern Company is focused on modernizing our infrastructure to improve system resilience and ensuring processes are in place to minimize physical risks to our energy systems. Over the 2022-2026 planning period, we aim to invest $17 billion across our electric transmission and distribution (T&D) systems, including smart grid infrastructure, energy storage, microgrids, and demand response technology. These efforts will help further modernize our T&D infrastructure, build system-wide resilience and enhance our ability to identify problems and avoid service disruptions for our customers.
