Boston (Platts)--30Jan2013/502 pm EST/2202 GMT

Southern Company said Wednesday for the first time its Southern Power wholesale generation subsidiary will pursue natural gas-based generation development and power sales opportunities outside the southeastern US.

Southern Power initially is targeting Texas and the Midwest Independent Transmission System Operator region, Thomas Fanning, Southern's chairman, president and CEO, said during an earnings conference call with analysts.

Fanning said Southern Power would continue to follow its conservative business model, under which the subsidiary commits to building new generating capacity only after it has secured a long-term power purchase agreement with a credit-worthy counterparty.

Fanning and Art Beattie, Southern's executive vice president and chief financial officer, said Southern Power's target customers in Texas and MISO will be thebsame as its typical customers in the Southeast, namely electric cooperatives and municipal utilities facing long-term power needs. Southern Power also could reach PPAs with investor-owned utilities, they said.

Fanning said that Southern Power expects to continue its focus on gas-fired generation, and that combined-cycle facilities and combustion turbine-based plants are both possibilities. The subsidiary also will keep looking for opportunities to develop solar and other renewable energy projects, primarily in the Southwest, he said.

Southern Power owns and operates about 8,300 MW of gas-fired generating capacity in Alabama, Florida, Georgia and North Carolina. It also owns and operates a 100-MW biomass-fired plant in Texas and a total of more than 80 MW in solar projects in Nevada, New Mexico and North Carolina.

--Housley Carr, newsdesk@platts.com --Edited by Jason Lindquist, jason_lindquist@platts.com