Cookeville Council To Consider 20-Year Agreement With TVA

The Cookeville City Council will consider a new long-term agreement with the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) this week.

Electric Department Director Carl Haney said the 20-year deal would come with a few added benefits.

“One of those is a 3.1-percent discount to our wholesale rate,” Haney said. “Also, they have some provisions in there for rate increases. If they increase their rates more than 5-percent the first five years or 10-percent any five years after that, this allows for us to negotiate those and see if we can come to an agreement with them.”

Haney said TVA would also allow some enhanced power supply flexibility.

“What that is, we’ve always had to purchase 100-percent of our power from TVA,” Haney said. “With solar and renewable becoming such a large item nowadays, they are agreeing to talk to us and help us if we want to start getting more into solar and use that for our power supply as well.”

The city’s existing 20-year agreement became effective in December 1984, but TVA amended the agreement in 2015 as a 10-year agreement.

Cookeville City Council votes on the proposed agreement with TVA during Thursday’s meeting.