ATLANTA, June 26, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Southern Company's landmark 25-megawatt carbon-capture demonstration received the 2014 Industry Excellence Chairman's Award Wednesday at the annual meeting of the Southeastern Electric Exchange (SEE), an association of investor-owned electric utility companies.

Located at Southern Company subsidiary Alabama Power's Plant Barry near Mobile, Ala., the groundbreaking project is the world's largest demonstration of carbon capture and sequestration on a pulverized-coal power plant. Approximately 150,000 tons of carbon dioxide are captured annually, supplied to the U.S. Department of Energy's Southeast Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership and transported through a 12-mile pipeline to the Citronelle oil field, where it is injected and permanently stored 9,500 feet underground in a deep geologic formation.

The start-to-finish carbon-capture demonstration on the scale of the Plant Barry facility is an important step toward establishing the technology's viability and economic feasibility. It represents a worldwide partnership led by Southern Company that also includes the U.S. Department of Energy, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, the Electric Power Research Institute, Denbury Resources, the Southern States Energy Board, rail companies and a host of international utilities.

The prestigious Chairman's Award, given annually to the SEE-member project considered the "Best of the Best," was accepted by Southern Company's Chief Environmental Officer Dr. Larry S. Monroe.

"The carbon-capture demonstration at Plant Barry represents an investment in our energy future through the development of technologies that will help provide clean, safe, reliable and affordable energy to customers using America's energy resources," said Monroe. "Southern Company recognizes the importance of energy innovation and leads the U.S. electric utility industry in robust, proprietary research and development."

Southern Company also received an Industry Excellence Award in the production category for the development of PowerGraphiX™, a proprietary control room graphics system that is licensed for sale on the open market and has the potential to set a new standard for the power generation industry.

PowerGraphiX™ is a high-performance human/machine interface that improves plant operators' situational awareness. Designed by a team of Southern Company plant operators, trainers and process-control engineers, the innovative system replaces multiple monitors displaying digital data with a tiered system of monitors that displays groupings of related information in analog format. This enables plant operators to better anticipate problems, make correct diagnoses and respond properly.

In addition, Southern Company subsidiary Mississippi Power received two SEE safety awards for the top performance in total company safety and in transmission and distribution safety.

For the second year in a row, Mississippi Power ranked first in top total company safety performance, which is awarded to the company achieving the best (lowest) Occupational Safety and Health Administration recordable incidence rate in reporting categories. This is the seventh time in the past nine years that Mississippi Power has received the best total company safety performance.

With 4.4 million customers and nearly 46,000 megawatts of generating capacity, Atlanta-based Southern Company (NYSE: SO) is the premier energy company serving the Southeast through its subsidiaries. A leading U.S. producer of clean, safe, reliable and affordable electricity, Southern Company owns electric utilities in four states and a growing competitive generation company, as well as fiber optics and wireless communications. Southern Company brands are known for energy innovation, excellent customer service, high reliability and retail electric prices that are below the national average. Southern Company and its subsidiaries are leading the nation's nuclear renaissance through the construction of the first new nuclear units to be built in a generation of Americans and are demonstrating their commitment to energy innovation through the development of a state-of-the-art coal gasification plant. Southern Company has been recognized by the U.S. Department of Defense and G.I. Jobs magazine as a top military employer, listed by DiversityInc as a top company for Blacks and designated a 2013 Top Employer for Hispanics by Hispanic Network. The company received the Edison Award from the Edison Electric Institute for its leadership in new nuclear development, was named Electric Light & Power magazine's Utility of the Year for 2012 and is continually ranked among the top utilities in Fortune's annual World's Most Admired Electric and Gas Utility rankings. Visit our website at www.southerncompany.com.

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SOURCE Southern Company