Tennessee Valley Authority
The Tennessee Valley Authority is a federally-owned electric utility corporation in the United States. TVA's service area covers all of Tennessee, portions of Alabama, Mississippi, and Kentucky, and small areas of Georgia, North Carolina, and Virginia. While owned by the federal government, TVA receives no taxpayer funding and operates similarly to a private for-profit company. It is headquartered in Knoxville, Tennessee, and is the sixth-largest power supplier and largest public utility in the country.
The TVA was created by Congress in 1933 as part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal. Its initial purpose was to provide navigation, flood control, electricity generation, fertilizer manufacturing, regional planning, and economic development to the Tennessee Valley, a region that had suffered from lack of infrastructure and even more extensive poverty during the Great Depression than other regions of the nation. TVA was envisioned both as a power supplier and a regional economic development agency that would work to help modernize the region's economy and society. It later evolved primarily into an electric utility. It was the first large regional planning agency of the U.S. federal government, and remains the largest.
Under the leadership of David E. Lilienthal, the TVA also became the global model for the United States' later efforts to help modernize agrarian societies in the developing world. The TVA historically has been documented as a success in its efforts to modernize the Tennessee Valley and helping to recruit new employment opportunities to the region. Historians have criticized its use of eminent domain and the displacement of over 125,000 Tennessee Valley residents to build the agency's infrastructure projects.
Operation
The Tennessee Valley Authority is a government-owned corporation created by U.S. Code Title 16, Chapter 12A, the Tennessee Valley Authority Act of 1933. It was initially founded as an agency to provide general economic development to the region through power generation, flood control, navigation assistance, fertilizer manufacturing, and agricultural development. Since the Depression years, it has developed primarily into a power utility. Despite its shares being owned by the federal government, TVA operates like a private corporation, and receives no taxpayer funding. The TVA Act authorizes the company to use eminent domain.TVA provides electricity to approximately ten million people through a diverse portfolio that includes nuclear, coal-fired, natural gas-fired, hydroelectric, and renewable generation. TVA sells its power to 153 local power utilities, 58 direct-serve industrial and institutional customers, 7 federal installations, and 12 area utilities. In addition to power generation, TVA provides flood control with its 29 hydroelectric dams. Resulting lakes and other areas also allow for recreational activities. The TVA also provides navigation and land management along rivers within its region of operation, which is the fifth-largest river system in the United States, and assists governments and private companies on economic development projects.
TVA's headquarters are located in Downtown Knoxville, with large administrative offices in Chattanooga and Nashville in Tennessee and Muscle Shoals, Alabama. TVA's headquarters were housed in the Old Customs House in Knoxville from 1936 until 1976, when the current complex opened. The building is now operated as a museum and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
The Tennessee Valley Authority Police is the primary law enforcement agency for the company. Initially part of the TVA, in 1994 the TVA Police was authorized as a federal law enforcement agency.
Board of directors
The Tennessee Valley Authority is governed by a nine-member part-time board of directors, nominated by the president of the United States and confirmed by the Senate. A minimum of seven of the directors are required to be residents of TVA's service area. The members select the chair from their number, and serve five-year terms. They receive annual stipends of $45,000. The board members choose the TVA's chief executive officer. When their terms expire, directors may remain on the board until the end of the current congressional session or until their successors take office, whichever comes first.Board members
The current board members as of 2025:| Position | Name | State | Appointed by | Sworn in | Term expires |
| Chairman | William J. Renick | Mississippi | Joe Biden | May 18, 2027 | |
| Member | Tennessee | Joe Biden | |||
| Member | Georgia | Joe Biden | May 18, 2027 | ||
| Member | Vacant | May 18, 2025 | |||
| Member | Vacant | ||||
| Member | Vacant | ||||
| Member | Vacant | ||||
| Member | Vacant | ||||
| Member | Vacant |
Power generation
Power stations
With a generating capacity of approximately 35 gigawatts, TVA has the sixth highest generation capacity of any utility company in the United States and the third largest nuclear power fleet, with seven units at three sites. In addition, it also operates four coal-fired power plants, 29 hydroelectric dams, nine simple-cycle natural gas combustion turbine plants, nine combined cycle gas plants, 1 pumped storage hydroelectric plant, 1 wind energy site, and 14 solar energy sites. In fiscal year 2020, nuclear generation made up about 41% of TVA's total energy production, natural gas 26%, coal 14%, hydroelectric 13%, and wind and solar 3%. TVA purchases about 15% of the power it sells from other power producers, which includes power from combined cycle natural gas plants, coal plants, and wind installations, and other renewables. The cost of Purchased Power is part of the "Fuel Cost Adjustment" charge that is separate from the TVA Rate. In addition, the Watts Bar Nuclear Plant is the only facility in the country to industrially produce tritium, which is used by the National Nuclear Security Administration for nuclear weapons, where it is used to supercharge and boost the explosive yield of the U.S. nuclear arsenal.Electric transmission
TVA owns and operates its own electric grid, which consists of approximately of lines, one of the largest grids in the United States. This grid is part of the Eastern Interconnection of the North American power transmission grid, and is under the jurisdiction of the SERC Reliability Corporation. Like most North American utilities, TVA uses a maximum transmission voltage of 500 kilovolts, with lines carrying this voltage using bundled conductors with three conductors per phase. The vast majority of TVA's transmission lines carry 161 kV, with the company also operating a number of sub-transmission lines with voltages of 69 kV and 46kV. They also operate a small number of 115kV and 230kV lines in Alabama and Georgia that connect to Southern Company lines of the same voltage.Recreation
TVA has conveyed approximately of property for recreation and preservation purposes including public parks, public access areas and roadside parks, wildlife refuges, national parks and forests, and other camps and recreation areas, comprising approximately 759 different sites.Currently, TVA manages approximately of federally owned land for public use. These lands are managed as either TVA Natural Areas or TVA Day-Use Recreation Areas. Natural Areas are smaller, ecologically or historically significant areas set aside for conservation, with some areas including hiking and walking trails. Day-Use Recreation Areas comprise approximately 80 different locations throughout the Tennessee Valley largely concentrated on or near TVA reservoirs that include water access points, campgrounds, hiking trails, fishing piers, and equestrian facilities.
Economic development
TVA operates an economic development organization that works with companies and economic development agencies throughout the Tennessee Valley to create jobs via private investments. They also work with businesses to help them choose locations for facilities and expand existing facilities. Services provided include assistance with site selection, employee recruitment and training, and research. A total of seven sites throughout the Valley are certified by TVA as megasites, which contain a minimum of, and have access to an Interstate Highway and the potential for rail service, and environmental impact study, and contain or have the potential to contain direct-serve industrial customers.Although Knoxville TVA Employees Credit Union was not directly affiliated with the Tennessee Valley Authority, it was established in 1934 as one of the Authority’s earliest economic efforts.
History
Background
In the late 19th century, the Army Corps of Engineers first recognized a number of potential dam sites along the Tennessee River for electricity generation and navigation improvements. The National Defense Act of 1916, signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson, authorized the construction of a hydroelectric dam on the Tennessee River in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, for the purpose of producing nitrates for ammunition; that dam was completed in 1924. During the 1920s and the 1930s, Americans began to support the idea of public ownership of utilities, particularly hydroelectric power facilities. Many believed privately owned power companies were charging too much for power, did not employ fair operating practices, and were subject to abuse by their owners -- utility holding companies -- at the expense of consumers. The concept of government-owned generation facilities selling to publicly owned distribution utilities was controversial, and remains so today. The private-sector practice of forming utility holding companies had resulted in them controlling 94 percent of generation by 1921, and they were essentially unregulated. In an effort to change this, Congress and Roosevelt enacted the Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935.During his 1932 presidential campaign, Franklin D. Roosevelt expressed his belief that private utilities had "selfish purposes" and said, "Never shall the federal government part with its sovereignty or with its control of its power resources while I'm President of the United States."
U.S. Senator George W. Norris of Nebraska also distrusted private utility companies, and in 1920 blocked a proposal from industrialist Henry Ford to build a private dam and create a utility to modernize the Tennessee Valley. In 1930, Norris sponsored the Muscle Shoals Bill, which would have built a federal dam in the valley, but it was vetoed by President Herbert Hoover, who believed it to be socialistic.
The idea behind the Muscle Shoals project became a core part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal program that created the Tennessee Valley Authority.
Even by Depression standards, the Tennessee Valley was in dire economic straits in 1933. Thirty percent of the population was affected by malaria. The average income in the rural areas was $639 per year, with some families surviving on as little as $100 per year.
Much of the land had been exhausted by poor farming practices, and the soil was eroded and depleted. Crop yields had fallen, reducing farm incomes. The best timber had been cut, and 10% of forests were lost to fires each year.