PPL Corporation


PPL Corporation is an energy company headquartered in Allentown, Pennsylvania, United States. It currently controls about 8,000 megawatts of regulated electric generating capacity in the United States and delivers electricity to 10.5 million customers in Pennsylvania, Kentucky, and Great Britain. PPL is the parent to seven regulated utility companies in the U.S., and it also provides natural gas delivery service to 321,000 customers in Kentucky. PPL Electric Utilities is PPL Corporation's primary subsidiary.
The majority of PPL's power plants burn coal, oil, or natural gas. PPL also owns peaking plants, which require few operators and have a high profit margin due to their ability to rapidly come online when the price of electricity spikes.
The company is publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange.

History

Pennsylvania Power & Light was founded in 1920 out of a merger of eight smaller Pennsylvania utilities. It gradually extended its service territory to a crescent-shaped region of central and northeastern Pennsylvania stretching from Lancaster, through the Lehigh Valley into Scranton and Wilkes-Barre. In 1995, it reorganized as a holding company, PP&L Resources, which changed its name to the current PPL Corporation in 2000.
The company limited its activities to Pennsylvania until deregulation of electrical utilities in the 1990s encouraged PPL to purchase assets in other states. The largest of these transactions was PPL's 1998 purchase of 13 plants from Montana Power. This added over 2,500 MW of capacity and was the largest expansion in PPL's history. In 2014, those hydroelectric facilities were sold to NorthWestern.
In May 2002, PPL announced that Robert G. Byram, PPL's chief nuclear officer since 1997, was retiring from the company. Bryce L. Shriver, who had served as vice president-Nuclear Site Operations at PPL's Susquehanna plant since 2000, became senior vice president and chief nuclear officer.
PPL's 2008 revenue was $8.2 billion, with a net profit of $930 million, making it number 314 on the 2009 Fortune 500 list.
In March 2011, PPL acquired from E.ON the British distribution company Central Networks for £3.5 billion. After acquiring Central Networks and LG&E, PPL's 2011 profit rose to $1.495 billion, on $12.7 billion in revenue, ranking it number 212 on Fortune's 2012 list.
On June 6, 2014, PPL announced it will be divesting its electrical generation facilities to a newly formed company, Talen Energy. On June 1, 2015, the Talen spinoff was completed, allowing PPL to concentrate on the transmission and distribution aspects of the electric utility business.
On July 1, 2016, PPL Solutions, LLC was sold to Hansen Technologies Limited. PPL Solutions provides billing, business process outsourcing, call center, and information technology services to regulated utilities in the United States.

Subsidiaries

After the takeover in 2000 of Wales' largest company, Hyder, to form half of Western Power Distribution, a local beauty spot and part Site of Special Scientific Interest in the Welsh capital city of Cardiff, called Llanishen Reservoir, was acquired as an asset.

Customer satisfaction

PPL Electric Utilities, which serves 1.4 million customers in 29 counties of Pennsylvania in the United States, has received 15 J.D. Power and Associates awards for customer satisfaction — more than any other utility in the United States.
In June, 2013, J.D. Power announced that PPL EnergyPlus ranked highest in the state for residential customer satisfaction in J.D. Power's first study of competitive electricity suppliers in Pennsylvania.

Headquarters

PPL Building

The PPL Building is now the tallest building in not just Allentown, but in the greater Lehigh Valley, after the demolition of the Martin Tower on May 19, 2019. The building has 23 stories and is tall. It is located at the intersection of Hamilton and Ninth Streets in the downtown area of the city.

The Plaza at PPL Center

In June 2003, PPL Corporation dedicated The Plaza at PPL Center, a new office building for continued growth in the company's non-regulated energy businesses.
The Plaza at PPL Center, PPL's new office building in downtown Allentown, Pennsylvania, boasts a long list of environmental features, including a vegetative roof and innovative energy and water-saving devices.
It has been awarded the Gold rating from the U.S. Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design program for making use of sustainable development principles.

Investments

In a speech before the Edison Electric Institute Financial Conference in November 2019, William Spence, PPL’s chairman and chief executive officer, said that the company is focusing on building more advanced cleaner energy technologies and is also increasing its effort on a strategy known as "Energy Forward." The company is investing around $15 billion through 2022 to improve infrastructure and technology in order to "create a smarter, more reliable and resilient energy grid," according to Spence. In the third quarter of 2019, PPL completed a $470 million investment in replacing meters with "advanced" meters in Pennsylvania.

Marketing

In February 2010, PPL Corporation purchased the naming rights to the venue originally known as PPL Park in Chester, Pennsylvania, the home stadium of Major League Soccer's Philadelphia Union. As part of the $25 million, 11-year deal, PPL EnergyPlus provides sustainable energy to PPL Park derived from other sources in Pennsylvania. After PPL spun off its non-regulated generation business into the separate Talen Energy, the stadium naming rights were assumed by the spinoff company and the venue became known as Talen Energy Stadium. In February 2020, the park was named Subaru Park.
PPL owns the naming rights to the PPL Center in Allentown, which hosts the Lehigh Valley Phantoms of the American Hockey League starting with the 2014 season. PPL paid an undisclosed sum over ten years.