CUMBERLAND CITY, Tenn. (AP) — A coal-fired power plant operated by the Tennessee Valley Authority has been shut down and won't produce electricity for two months because of planned maintenance.

The Cumberland Fossil Plant in Cumberland City, Tennessee will undergo work involving rebuilding and upgrading the entire unit.

TVA spokesman Jimmie Hopson told The Leaf-Chronicle the agency opted to take advantage of a low power demand period to do the work.

Unit 1 at the plant was taken off line on Oct. 4 for a planned maintenance outage, which basically involves rebuilding and upgrading the entire unit over nearly a two-month period. Unit 2 was taken down on Oct. 10 for maintenance of its turbine.

"We knew we needed to do this, so we planned to do it at the same time (as Unit 1)," Hopson said.

The unit is the largest fossil fuel plant in TVA's fleet. The Cumberland Fossil Plant generates more than 18 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity annually, enough to power about 1.2 million homes.

The huge turbines in each unit are spun at 3,600 RPMs by pressurized steam. The turbines turn generators that can make up to 2,600 megawatts of electricity.

"Work on a turbine is not the kind of thing you can repair in a day or two," he said. "This will be a matter of weeks."

He couldn't give a timetable for Unit 2 to be back producing electricity.

"It shouldn't be a horribly long outage," he said.