Tennessee consumes nearly four times more energy than it produces
Tennessee stretches almost 500 miles across from the state’s eastern border with Virginia and North Carolina to its western border at the Mississippi River. The eastern part of the state produces coal, natural gas and crude oil. It ranks among the top one-third of the state in total energy consumption, per US Energy Information.
TVA, the largest government-owned electricity provider in the nation, owns 92 percent of Tennessee’s electrical sources and serves not only Tennessee’s 95 counties but also parts of six other states. The facilities in Tennessee include 19 hydroelectric dams, 7 natural gas-fired power plants, 4 coal-fired power plants, 2 nuclear power plants, and 1 pumped-storage hydroelectric plant. The TVA also operates one wind farm and several small solar power facilities.
The largest power plant in Tennessee is the coal-fired Cumberland facility. TVA owns the power plant but plans to shut it down by 2028 and replace it with natural gas-fired generation for economic and environmental reasons.
“Tennessee helped usher in the nuclear age with the nation’s first nuclear fuel enrichment plant, built at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory near Knoxville as part of the World War II Manhattan Project that developed the first atomic bomb,” according to the National Park Service. “Today, Tennessee has two nuclear power generating sites, the Sequoyah Nuclear Power Plant and the Watts Bar Nuclear Power Plant, both located in southeastern Tennessee with two reactors each.”
Tennessee is the seventh-largest hydroelectric power producer in the nation
Renewable resources, mostly hydropower, supply about 14 per cent of Tennessee’s total in-state electricity. The state is the seventh-largest conventional hydroelectric power producer in the nation and the third-largest east of the Mississippi River.
The TVA’s Raccoon Mountain pumped storage plant, which began operating in 1978, is the fourth-largest power plant and the largest hydroelectric facility in Tennessee.
Solar facilities contribute the second-largest share of renewable energy generation in Tennessee. Mostly solar panels installed on residential and business rooftops. Biomass in the form of wood, wood waste and landfill gas accounted for about 6 per cent of the state’s renewable net generation and nearly 1 percent of total generation in 2022. Tennessee’s biomass resources are also used as feedstock for the state’s three wood pellet manufacturing plants. Wood pellets are burned for electricity generation and for heating.
Although Tennessee does not have a renewable portfolio standard requiring a certain amount of its electricity come from renewable energy sources, the state was among the first in the Southeast to develop renewable generation beyond hydroelectric power. The region’s first major wind farm, located on Buffalo Mountain near Oliver Springs, began operating as a facility in 2000 and has expanded to 15 wind turbines. The state’s best wind resources are along the Appalachian Mountains in eastern Tennessee.
Some energy efficient recommendations
There are ways to save energy, like solar innovation. According to the Associated Press, within 15 years, solar power has the potential to supply up to 40% of the nation’s electricity.
There are also ways to help you save on your energy bill in the summer and winter months. In order to make homes more energy efficient, experts recommend using as much natural lighting as possible and turning off devices and electronics when not is use.
“If the weather permits, facilitate natural ventilation as much as possible,” said Sanjay Srinivasan, director of the Department of Energy and Mineral Engineering at Pennsylvania State University, according to the WalletHub report. “Be conscious about the devices around you that are absolutely needed. Power off or use energy-saving features in the devices that you do not frequently use.”
In order to determine how each state ranked, WalletHub compared 48 states across two dimensions — home energy efficiency and auto energy efficiency.