Southern Ala. Farley 2 reactor starts to exit outage

NEW YORK, Nov 9 (Reuters) - Southern Co's (SO.N) 860-megawatt Unit 2 at the Farley nuclear power station in Alabama started to exit an outage and ramped up to 12 percent power by early Monday, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission said in a report.

The unit shut on Nov. 5 to fix a transformer in the plant's low voltage switchyard.

The 1,711 MW Farley station is located in Dothan in Houston County about 95 miles northwest of Tallahassee, Florida. There are two units at the station, the 851 MW Unit 1 and 860 MW Unit 2, which entered service in 1977 and 1981.

The NRC renewed the unit's original 40-year operating licenses in 2005 for another 20 years until 2037 and 2041.

Unit 1 continued to operate at full power.

One MW powers about 500 homes in Alabama.

Southern, of Atlanta, owns and operates more than 42,000 MW of generating capacity, markets energy commodities, and transmits and distributes electricity to nearly 4.4 million customers in Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Florida. (Reporting by Scott DiSavino; Editing by John Picinich)