NCUC backs away from nuke plant rate hike

There may be hope for ratepayers yet:

The public advocate for North Carolina utilities customers has reversed position and will oppose — at least for now — any proposal to make it easier for utilities to recover some costs for nuclear plant construction before plants are built.

Aside from the fact that nuke plant construction costs are prohibitive on an astronomic scale, our current power surplus is so large Duke Energy is desperately recruiting power-gobbling data centers to suck up that extra juice. Our baseload is just fine, thank you very much.

And just to say it, the NCUC shouldn't have to reverse itself on backing SuperCWIP legislation, the Commission should have been against it from the start.

A massive customer ratehike on a scale never seen before, that also gets a pass on the NCUC's standard review process? You give that the thumbs-up, and I'll be ready to give the thumbs-up to the dismantling of the Commission itself.

Here's some background:

At issue is what has come to be called “SuperCWIP” legislation. In 2007, North Carolina adopted legislation that allows utilities to charge customers the financing costs for a nuclear plant. But it requires that the costs be approved in a full-blown rate review. That legislation was called Construction Work in Progress — or CWIP.

Uncertainty that those costs would be approved by regulators has led capital markets to be leery of financing nuclear plants under those conditions. So Duke and Progress have asked for an expedited procedure adopted in South Carollina that makes it much more certain that utilities can collect the financing costs. That has been dubbed SuperCWIP among legislators and activists on both sides of the issue.

But Duke was already projecting Lee’s costs at $11 billion — a figure Gruber says he considers “very conservative.” New regulations and other issues arising from the Japan situation could drive those costs much higher. So the staff now advocates waiting before making any decisions about nuclear power.

He says he has shared the staff's view privately with legislators. He says enough legislators appear to share that concern that there will be no legislation.

We'll see. Republican Legislators have exhibited few reservations about lying to both the public at large and their Democratic colleagues. I wouldn't write home about those assurances.