SSE on track

1st Feb 2011 07:29

Energy provider Scottish And Southern Energy (SSE) remains on course to deliver its stated financial and operational goals for the current financial year.However, the company said that the Generation and Supply division's operating profit for the current financial year is expected to be slightly lower than the previous year's level.Income investors will be cheered to learn that the company remains on course to deliver a full-year dividend of at least 74.5p per share and to deliver increases of at least 2% above the inflation rate (as measured by the Retail Prices Index) in respect of 2010/11, 2011/12 and 2012/13.In the nine months to the end of 2010 the company's customer base increased by 300,000 to 10.05m.Its wholly-owned gas-fired power stations achieved 93% of their maximum availability to generate electricity, excluding planned outages, the same as in 2009. Coal-fired stations achieved 83%, compared with 93% in 2009, while wind farms achieved 97%, the same as in 2009.Total electricity output from gas-fired and coal-fired power stations was 31 terawatts per hour (TWh), up from 28TWh in the corresponding period of 2009.Total electricity output from hydro generation was 1,760 gigawatts per hour (GWh), a reduction of 30% on the year before.Total output of wind energy was 1,314GWh, an increase of 13.5% year on year. However, this increase was because of new wind farms coming on stream; excluding these, output of wind energy was down by almost 20% on a like-for-like basis. The number of units of electricity distributed was 30.6TWh, compared with 30.1TWh the year before.The latest analysis of consumption of energy by SSE's household customers in the 10 months to 31 January 2011 shows that consumption of gas per customer was 7% higher than in the 10 months to 31 January 2010, but 4% lower than in the 10 months to 31 January 2009. Furthermore, consumption of electricity per customer was the same as in the 10 months to 31 January 2010 but 7% lower than in the 10 months to 31 January 2009.