Description
PPL Corporation is an energy company headquartered in Allentown, Pennsylvania, United States. It generates about 7,500 megawatts of power in Kentucky.
The company is publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange.
History
Pennsylvania Power & Light was founded in 1920 out of a merger of eight smaller Pennsylvania utilities. It gradually extended its service territory to a crescent-shaped region of central and northeastern Pennsylvania stretching from Lancaster, through the Lehigh Valley into Scranton and Wilkes-Barre. In 1995, it reorganized as a holding company, PP&L Resources, which changed its name to the current PPL Corporation in 2000.
The company limited its activities to Pennsylvania until deregulation of electrical utilities in the 1990s encouraged PPL to purchase assets in other states. The largest of these transactions was PPL's 1998 purchase of 13 plants from Montana Power (leaving NorthWestern Energy – the buyer of the former Montana Power transmission and distribution systems – vulnerable to high "spot" prices on the energy market). This added over 2,500 MW of capacity and was the largest expansion in PPL's history. In 2014, those hydroelectric facilities were sold to NorthWestern.
In 2010, PPL completed the acquisition of two regulated utilities in Kentucky: Louisville Gas and Electric and Kentucky Utilities.
In 2011, PPL completed the acquisition of two regulated regional electricity distribution companies in the United Kingdom. Together, with two previously acquired regional electricity distribution companies, they operate under the name Western Power Distribution (WPD).
On June 6, 2014, PPL announced it would divest its electrical generation facilities to a newly formed company, Talen Energy. On June 1, 2015, the Talen spinoff was completed, allowing PPL to concentrate on the transmission and distribution aspects of the electric utility business.
In 2020, PPL initiated a formal process to sell WPD in order to position PPL as a purely U.S.-focused energy company and create additional shareowner value. This resulted in a March 18, 2021, announcement of agreements to sell WPD to National Grid plc for £7.8 billion and acquire National Grid's Rhode Island electric and gas utility, the Narragansett Electric Company, for $3.8 billion. The sale of WPD was completed on June 14, 2021.
