Marshall Municipal Utilities

Electric Production

Marshall residents created MMU's electric utility in 1916 when they were unhappy with the current for-profit Missouri Gas and Electric Service Company. In an era when electricity was becoming less of a luxury and more of a necessity, municipal electricity seemed to be the answer. Legal battles and a World War prevented MMU from taking over all electric service in Marshall until early 1920.

Electric Generation Graph: You might be interested in a graph showing Marshall's consumption and generation of electricity. Below is an hourly graph for July which is somewhat typical for a summer month.

The irregular black line shows our consumption of electricity. Notice how it goes up with increased temperature. And if you look closely, you can pick out the weekends when the use of electricity reduces. For the energy we used, and the capacity to generate it, we paid nearly $1.5 million to MoPEP.

The blue area is our generation. That energy, and our capacity, was sold to MoPEP for about $1.1 million. Most days we were operating our coal fired steam units; #4 and #5. Early every morning we turn them down for cleaning. On July 10 - 14 we also ran natural gas fired internal combustion engines; Units #10 and #11. On July 17 - 20 we operated our natural gas fired gas turbine, Unit #6, in addition to the other four units. On those days we were scheduled by MoPEP to over generate, to send electricity to Carrollton. On July 29 we had a tube leak in Unit #5 and had to shut it down until the 31st. Unit #4 remained on-line.