The Southern Company system boasts more than 26,000 innovators–the employees of our subsidiaries. Innovation is in our DNA, and this has been the case throughout our 104-year history.

Among many other technological advances throughout the years, Southern Company developed the "Early Bird" analog computer system in 1954. Designed to coordinate and dispatch electricity from system power plants, it was widely hailed in its day as the most advanced system of its kind. That tradition continues today as we proactively encourage an "innovation ecosystem."

In 2015, we launched the Energy Innovation Center in Atlanta's Technology Square. While innovative thinking in the Southern Company system is not limited to any particular facility or team of individuals, the center serves as a crucible for the vetting and development of ideas, many of which come directly from employees. Others are surfaced through partnerships with leading universities, research organizations and like-minded companies such as Nest and Tesla.

The center employs relatively few full-time personnel, engaging teams of employees and outside experts to work together on an ad hoc basis to address some of our industry's most pressing issues, including electric battery storage, electric vehicle technology and charging infrastructure and the use of data to help meet customer needs. Related product development initiatives provide a platform from which to design and evaluate new products and services that could potentially result in new lines of business for the Southern Company system.

The center is a direct outgrowth of the company's 2014 SO Prize competition, in which employees submitted nearly 1,000 ideas for improving customer value. Many of those ideas, including the prize winners featured in our 2014 summary annual report, are being further cultivated at the center.

SoConnected is one such concept that combines new customer billing options with the creative use of data to develop products and services to support the smart home of the future. We expect that homes are only going to keep getting "smarter" with the integration of products that can "think" on their own and communicate with one another. Such a home might include integrated high-efficiency solar panels, seasonally timed lighting, sprinkler system and temperature regulation, home security and monitoring systems, electric vehicles and associated charging infrastructure, home battery storage and back-up generators.

Team members from another SO Prize winner, rEVolution, are currently developing a comprehensive approach to accelerate the adoption of electric vehicles, including pre-sale education and awareness, sales and leasing facilitation, post-sale customer service and the development of a robust, system-wide charging network. The rEVolution team partnered with Gulf Power in 2015 to host an event in which citizens learned more about electric vehicles. The team looks to roll out similar events across Southern Company's footprint in 2016.

We also continue to explore the use of unmanned aircraft systems in our operations. Unmanned aircraft have emerged as a new and important tool for improving safety and reliability, decreasing outages and helping contain costs associated with maintaining our region's transmission infrastructure.

All of these efforts support the evolution of Southern Company's business model by introducing new ways of thinking about our work and through the adoption of the best ideas and practices of businesses both inside and outside our industry. Our ultimate goal is to serve customers better by providing the next generation of clean, safe, reliable and affordable energy solutions.