President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the Tennessee Valley Authority Act (ch. 32, 48 Stat. 58, codified as amended at 16 U.S.C. § 831, et seq.), creating TVA on May 18, 1933.
As a supplier of electric power, the agency was given authority to enter into long-term (20 years) contracts for the sale of power to government agencies and private entities, to construct electric power transmission lines to areas not otherwise supplied and to establish rules and regulations for electricity retailing and distribution. TVA is thus both a power supplier and a regulatory agency.
Today, TVA is the nation's largest public power company, providing electric power to over nine million customers in the Tennessee Valley. It acts primarily as an electric power wholesaler, selling to 156 retail power distributors and 56 directly served industrial or government customers. Power comes from dams providing hydroelectric power, fossil fuel plants, nuclear power plants, combustion turbines, wind turbines and solar panels.
Tennessee Valley Authority - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia