The Memphis Light Gas and Water Division (MLGW) is a municipal public utility serving the city of Memphis and Shelby County, Tennessee, United States.
MLGW is the largest three-service municipal utility in the U.S., with more than 420,000 customers. It is owned by the City of Memphis. Since 1939, MLGW has provided electricity, natural gas, and water service for residents of Memphis and Shelby County.
MLGW is supplied with electricity by the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), a federal agency that sells electricity on a nonprofit basis to its distributors. MLGW is TVA's largest customer, representing 11 percent of TVA's total load. There are over 428,000 electric customers. [1]
Natural gas is the most common means of residential heating in the MLGW service area. MLGW provides natural gas to more than 313,000 customers in Shelby County.
While some utilities obtain drinking water from surface lakes or rivers, MLGW supplies water from the Memphis aquifer beneath Shelby County. It contains more than 100 trillion gallons of water that are more than 2,000 years old. MLGW operates one of the largest artesian well systems in the world consisting of 10 water pumping stations and more than 175 wells, delivering water to more than 253,000 customers. [2] [3]
The city purchased a private water system in 1902 and operated it as the Memphis Artesian Water Department. [4] The city later purchased the local portion of the electrical system of the Memphis Power and Light Company in 1939 for $15 million [5] and formed the MLGW Division. [4]
From 1937 to 1970, the department was headquartered at the historic Scimitar Building at Madison Avenue and Third Street. [6]
Memphis is a city in the U.S. state of Tennessee. It is the county seat of Shelby County, in the southwesternmost part of the state, and is situated along the Mississippi River. With a population of 633,104 at the 2020 U.S. census, Memphis is the second-most populous city in Tennessee after Nashville.
The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) 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.
West Tennessee is one of the three Grand Divisions of Tennessee that roughly comprises the western quarter of the state. The region includes 21 counties between the Tennessee and Mississippi rivers, delineated by state law. Its geography consists primarily of flat lands with rich soil and vast floodplain areas of the Mississippi River. Of the three regions, West Tennessee is the most sharply defined geographically, and is the lowest-lying. It is both the least populous and smallest, in land area, of the three Grand Divisions. Its largest city is Memphis, the state's second most populous city.
The Wolf River is a 105-mile-long (169 km) alluvial river in western Tennessee and northern Mississippi, whose confluence with the Mississippi River was the site of various Chickasaw, French, Spanish and American communities that eventually became Memphis, Tennessee. It is estimated to be about 12,000 years old, formed by glacier runoff carving into the region's soft alluvial soil. It should not be confused with The Wolf River which flows primarily in Middle Tennessee and southern Kentucky. The Wolf River rises in the Holly Springs National Forest at Baker's Pond in Benton County, Mississippi, and flows northwest into Tennessee, before entering the Mississippi River north of downtown Memphis.
Puget Sound Energy, Inc. (PSE) is an energy utility company based in the U.S. state of Washington that provides electrical power and natural gas to the Puget Sound region. The utility serves electricity to more than 1.2 million customers in Island, King, Kitsap, Kittitas, Pierce, Skagit, Thurston, and Whatcom counties, and provides natural gas to 877,000 customers in King, Kittitas, Lewis, Pierce, Snohomish and Thurston counties. The company's electric and natural gas service area spans 6,000 square miles (16,000 km2).
Nashville Electric Service is one of the 11 largest public electric utilities in the United States, distributing energy to more than 450,000 customers in Middle Tennessee. The NES service area covers 700 square miles (1,800 km2), all of Nashville/Davidson County and portions of the six surrounding counties.
The Lansing Board of Water & Light is a publicly owned, municipal utility that provides electricity and water to the residents of the cities of Lansing and East Lansing, Michigan, and the surrounding townships of Delta, Delhi, Meridian and DeWitt. The Lansing Board of Water & Light also provides steam and chilled water services within the City of Lansing. It is the largest public utility in Michigan.
The Orlando Utilities Commission is a municipally-owned public utility providing water and electric service to the citizens of Orlando, Florida and portions of adjacent unincorporated areas of Orange County, as well as St. Cloud, Florida, in Osceola County.
JEA, located in Jacksonville, Florida, is the eighth-largest community-owned electric utility company in the United States and the largest in Florida. As of 2022, JEA served more than 1 million Northeast Florida residents with electric, water, sewer and reclaimed water services. JEA also provides some customers with natural gas sales, and access to dark fiber. In addition, JEA works with the City of Jacksonville to maintain its streetlight system. Besides Jacksonville, JEA also serves customers in Clay, Nassau and St. Johns counties.
Southern Company Gas, formerly AGL Resources, is an American Fortune 500 energy services holding company headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia. The company's operations consist of natural gas distribution, wholesale services, retail operations, and midstream operations. Southern Company Gas is one of the largest natural gas distribution companies in the United States. The company serves approximately 4.5 million utility customers through its regulated distribution subsidiaries across four states. Southern Company Gas made the Fortune 500 list in 2015, Forbes 2000 in 2006, and is a member of the S&P 500 Index. In 2016, Southern Company acquired AGL Resources and renamed it Southern Company Gas.
Guyana, meaning "land of many waters", is rich in water resources. Most of the population is concentrated in the coastal plain, much of which is below sea level and is protected by a series of sea walls. A series of shallow reservoirs inland of the coastal plain, called "water conservancies", store surface water primarily for irrigation needs. Key issues in the water and sanitation sector in Guyana are poor service quality, a low level of cost recovery and low levels of access.
The City of Memphis is located on the eastern bank of the Mississippi River in the southwest corner of the U.S. state of Tennessee. It is the regional hub for a tri-state area of Arkansas, Mississippi and Tennessee.
The Chattanooga and Tennessee Electric Power Company was formed in 1905 by Josephus C. Guild, Charles E. James and Anthony N. Brady to produce hydroelectric power and improving the navigation of the Tennessee River.
EPB of Chattanooga, formerly known as the Electric Power Board of Chattanooga, is an American electric power distribution and telecommunication company owned by the city of Chattanooga, Tennessee. EPB serves nearly 180,000 homes and businesses in a 600-square mile area in the greater Chattanooga area and Hamilton County. In 2010, EPB was the first company in the United States to offer 1 Gbit/s high-speed internet over a fiber optic network, over 200 times faster than the national average. As a result, Chattanooga has been called "Gig City" and held up as a national model for deploying the world's fastest internet and the most advanced Smart Grid electric distribution system in the United States. On October 15, 2015, Chattanooga implemented the world's first community-wide 10-gig Internet service.
United Gas Pipe Line Co. v. Mobile Gas Service Corp., 350 U.S. 332 (1956), is a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court interpreted the Natural Gas Act of 1938 (NGA) as not allowing a gas supply company to unilaterally modify rates in a natural gas supply contract by filing a new rate schedule with the Federal Power Commission (FPC). Mobile Gas and its companion case Federal Power Commission v. Sierra Pacific Power Co. established the Mobile-Sierra presumption which holds that an electricity or natural gas supply rate established resulting from a freely negotiated contract is presumed to be "just and reasonable" and thus acceptable under the NGA or Federal Power Act (FPA).
United Gas Pipe Line Co. v. Memphis Light, Gas, and Water Division, 358 U.S. 103 (1958), is a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court interpreted the Natural Gas Act of 1938 (NGA) as allowing a gas supply company to unilaterally modify a rate in a natural gas supply contract if the contract specified that the rate was that of the rate schedule filed with the Federal Power Commission (FPC) and the gas company filed a new rate schedule. This case clarified the Mobile-Sierra doctrine established by United Gas Pipe Line Co. v. Mobile Gas Service Corp. (1956) and its companion case Federal Power Commission v. Sierra Pacific Power Co. (1956), which holds that an electricity or natural gas supply rate established resulting from a freely negotiated contract is presumed to be "just and reasonable" and thus acceptable under the NGA or Federal Power Act (FPA).
The United States state of Arkansas is a significant producer of natural gas and a minor producer of petroleum.
The Allen Combined Cycle Plant is a 1.1-gigawatt natural gas power plant located south of Memphis, Tennessee that began generating electricity in 2018. It is operated by Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA).
The Allen Fossil Plant was a 741-megawatt (MW), coal power plant located south of Memphis, Tennessee. It generated electricity from 1959 to 2018. At the time of its closure, the plant was operated by Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA).