Power company Entergy on Tuesday reported $797.3 million in consolidated earnings for the first half of 2016, a 78 percent increase from the $446.9 million earnings reported in the same period for 2015. The utility recorded $567.3 million in as-reported earnings for the second quarter, compared to $148.8 million for the same period of 2015.
Entergy’s Wholesale Commodities segment, which includes the company’s nuclear fleet, earned $1.39 per share on an as-reported basis for the quarter, compared to a $0.02 per share loss in second-quarter 2015. The EWC year-over-year increase was due largely to income tax items recorded in the latest quarter, according to Entergy.
Entergy Chairman and CEO Leo Denault touched on the company’s potential sale of its James A. FitzPatrick Nuclear Power Plant in New York to fellow utility Exelon. Entergy, citing economic factors, is moving forward with plans to shut down and decommission the plant, but Exelon in July made a bid for the site.
The New York Public Service Commission this week approved Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s Clean Energy Standard, which could pay upstate nuclear power plant operators up to $1 billion in zero-emission energy credits over the first two years of the program. Denault said he regards the energy program as a “critical component” to a potential transaction, and he’s hopeful that negotiations will wrap up this month. Entergy will continue to move forward on two parallel routes, he said: decommissioning plans and sale plans. At this point, he said Entergy is continuing to review Cuomo’s energy plan, but the company is “very encouraged.”
“The opportunity to change the future of FitzPatrick has significant positive impact on our employees, in the surrounding communities, and we’re willing to consider any viable option to keeping the plant open,” Denault said. “In that spirit, we applaud the New York PSC’s decision to adopt the Clean Energy Standard program. … Regardless of the outcome (of negotiations), our focus continues to be on the safe and reliable operation of the plant for as long as it continues to operate.”
He also discussed operations at the company’s Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station in Massachusetts, which is scheduled for shutdown in 2019. Following a series of unplanned shutdowns and safety relief valve concerns, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in September lowered the plant’s safety rating to Column 4. Plants that fall to Column 5 would be in danger of license suspension or revocation. The NRC is to conduct three inspections to increase oversight at the facility, and Entergy passed the first two without any major issues. The third inspection is expected this fall, Denault said, and the NRC could issue a confirmatory action letter as early as spring 2017.
