NEW YORK (Standard&Poor's) Aug. 18, 2005--Standard&Poor's Ratings Services said today that Tucson Electric Power Co.'s (BB/Stable/B-1) forced outage at the 380 MW Springerville #2 coal plant detracts from its credit quality but does not immediately affect the ratings or outlooks on the company. However, if outage-related repair and replacement power costs prove to be sufficiently severe or the plant fails to resume stable operations within a reasonable time frame, Standard&Poor's may consider assigning a negative outlook or placing the ratings on CreditWatch with negative implications. The plant outage, which occurred on Aug. 11, was due to a system malfunction, which the company estimates will cost $500,000 per day in replacement power costs. The company
