Exelon estimates loss of up to $710 million
Exelon Corp. expects its firstquarter net income will be reduced by $560 million to $710 million because of last week’s cold blast in Texas, saying three of its power plants were forced to shut down.
The utility owner cited periodic outages beginning Feb. 15 at three of its natural-gas plants in Texas in a statement Wednesday. Exelon said the losses would be offset by $410 million to $490 million in deferred maintenance costs and additional revenue opportunities.
The Chicago-based company’s gas plant operators routinely plan for harsh weather, but this was “unprecedented and sustained” cold, Exelon said in the statement.
The historic outage caused billions in economic losses, and the impact to individual companies is just starting to emerge.
Also on Wednesday, Exelon Corp. announced plans to split into two publicly traded companies, one for its regulated electric and gas utilities like ComEd and the other for its power generation assets like its nuclear power plants. Exelon said separating the two companies will create the nation’s largest fully regulated transmission and distribution utility company. ComEd serves more than 10 million customers in five states. The company will invest $27 billion to continue modernizing the grid, Exelon said.