nuclear fiasco aftermath

It was a greatly anticipated decision.

The Public Service Commission favored investor-owned Duke Power and Dominion Energy at the expense of small solar companies, according to solar advocates.

The question before the PSC was essentially how much the large utilities must pay for solar power they buy from small producers and how long the contracts must be.

According to a national trade group, the solar rates set by the PSC are “the lowest in the country, and the contract lengths among the least attractive in the Southeast.”

This begs a question, of course: Why are state regulators setting prices?

The short answer is that lawmakers have guaranteed service territories to each utility, creating captive customers who cannot choose their own power company. They cannot buy from a small solar company directly rather than from Duke or Dominion if they so choose.

But that’s not all. Besides creating an energy monopoly, lawmakers also control every aspect of it. Utility regulators are elected by lawmakers, after being screened and nominated by a legislatively-dominated board known as the Public Utilities Review Committee (PURC). And who controls who sits on the PURC? 3 lawmakers.

Despite their colossal failure to guard the public interest in the nuclear project fiasco, lawmakers have refused to give up one iota of their control of regulation.

As a result, every decision made by utility regulators – good or bad, large or small – must ultimately be laid at the door of your House member and your senator.

The decision by Santee Cooper and SCANA, the parent company of SCE&G, to abandon a $9 billion joint project to build 2 nuclear power facilities means that their customers were not only charged $2 billions to build plants that won’t be finished, but will also have to pay billions more – for decades to come – on the project’s debt.

There are more questions than answers.

It will take some time to unravel the details of this decade-long debacle. What is undeniable is that not only has the energy monopoly in the state failed to the point of crisis, but the lawmaker power monopoly is entirely to blame for the catastrophic cost.

The long-term solution is de-regulation of the energy monopoly.

In fact, it’s becoming clear that opening up the energy market and getting politicians out of the utility business is the only way South Carolinians will avoid the high cost of paying off the debt for nuclear plants that will never supply power.

Mr. Brundrett is the news editor of The Nerve. Contact him at 803-254-4411 or rick@thenerve.org .