Southern Company subsidiary Georgia Power said Friday that Plant Vogtle construction expenses in the first half of 2015 had gone down compared to the last half of 2014.
The company said it had spent $148 million from January through June this year, compared with $169 million from July through December in 2014.
Projected costs for the plant, which is 46 percent owned by Southern Co., now stands at $7.5 billion. That's a 22 percent gain over the original projections. In addition, construction is 39 months behind schedule, which has lead to lawsuits filed between Westinghouse and construction partner CB&I (formerly Chicago Bridge & Iron).
Southern has blamed the delays on design flaws, which created the need for additional regulatory reviews.
For now, media reports say the decline in expenses reported Friday would be a gain for both investors and customers. Unless constructions costs are not approved by state regulators, they are passed along to customers.
This contingency creates the constant need to compared the construction costs at Vogtle to the costs of building an alternative power plant, among which the most likely choice would be a natural gas-burning plant, given the falling price of natural gas. But private and government costs analysis still point to completing the nuclear power plant as the cheapest options.