Our customers depend on us as their electrical supplier to provide them with a continuous supply of electricity for their use at a reasonable price. CPWS provides electric service to 23,958 customers (June 30, 2006) located in the Cities of Columbia and Spring Hill and parts of Maury County.

Our electric power, along with that of the other 158 power distributors in the Tennessee Valley, is purchased from the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). The power purchased from TVA is distributed to our customers through two 46 kV and two 161 kV electrical substations and then over 750 miles of overhead power lines on 15,500 poles and 58 miles of underground power lines.

Our customers' usage can be separated into three categories--residential, commercial and industrial, and outdoor lighting. Our residential customers use 50% of the purchased power, the commercial and industrial customers use 48.6%, and outdoor lighting requires only 1.4% of the purchased power. During fiscal year 2006, CPWS residential customers used an average of 15,600 kWh and paid an average rate of 7.21 cents per kWh (including customer charge).

A very essential element to our system reliability is right-of-way vegetation management.  CPWS utilizes professional tree trimming crews to clear right-of-way year-round. Cleared right-of-ways reduce tree-related outages and animal related outages.

Our future plans include the capability to provide sufficient line capacity to swap loads between our substations in the case of an internal substation problem or reduced power supply to one or more of our substations.