Tom Fanning
Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer at Southern
Thank you, Scott. Good afternoon and thank you for joining us today. Our third quarter financial results continue to support our full year earnings objectives. And the economies within our service territories remain strong, including customer growth and economic activity that has outpaced our expectations. Given our financial performance through the third quarter, we expect full year adjusted earnings per share near the top of our earnings guidance range.
Before turning the call over to Dan for a more detailed look at our financial performance, I'd first like to provide an update on the recent progress at Plant Vogtle Units three and four. Importantly, the projected completion timeline and capital cost forecast for both units remain consistent with what we outlined last quarter.
Since our last call, the site team has continued to make substantial progress on Unit three, highlighted by the successful achievement of several major milestones, including submitting the all ITAAC complete letter, receiving the 103g finding from the NRC, which signifies that license acceptance criteria for Unit three have been met, and successfully completing the safe transfer of all 157 fuel assemblies from Unit three spent fuel pool to the reactor core early last week.
Fuel load marked another historic and pivotal milestone towards startup and commercial operations. The focus over the next couple of months turns to final preparations and testing of systems primarily associated with the electric power production side of the plant and achieving the pristine conditions in the nuclear island necessary for start-up activities.
The next major milestone for Unit three is initial criticality or the first self-sustaining nuclear reaction, which is projected in January. Once this important milestone is achieved, plant operators can begin the prescribed testing sequence, which includes a series of power ascensions and reductions, various sustained power output plateaus and multiple forced trips to test the unit's safety systems.
This rigorous process is intended to demonstrate the performance of the unit under a variety of conditions and its readiness to be included in reliable dispatch and to be placed in service for the benefit of customers. We continue to project Unit three will be placed in service by the end of the first quarter of 2023.
Turning to Unit four. Open vessel testing was completed in August and direct construction is now approximately 97% complete. Electrical production, in particular, electrical terminations remains a key area of focus.
To support our projected December 2023 in-service date, recent electrical production levels must be sustained for several more weeks. Testing is expected to become the critical path as the project team progresses towards future milestones of cold hydro testing and the start of hot functional testing, which is projected by the end of the first quarter 2023.
Dan, I'll now turn the call over to you.