South Carolina regulators reject Dominion Energy’s do-nothing plan for providing electricity to customers

COLUMBIA, S.C. — South Carolina Public Service Commissioners have unanimously rejected Dominion Energy’s proposed plan for how it would provide electricity to customers over the next several years, and have ordered the utility to file a modified plan within 60 days.

Commissioners said Dominion, which serves more than 750,000 customers in the Palmetto State, made faulty assumptions in its plan regarding everything from fuel prices, energy efficiency, coal retirements, and renewable energy.

Commissioners ordered that Dominion's modified plan (called an Integrated Resource Plan, or IRP) must include updated modeling with analysis contained in expert testimony from the Sierra Club and the Solar Business Administration, including scenarios that retire dirty coal and replace it with clean resources such as solar and battery storage. Dominion must also factor in higher levels of demand side management programs, which lower electricity demand, avoid the cost of building new generators and transmission lines, lower pollution from power plants, and save customers money.

In their order, Public Service Commissioners also:

• Mandated that all future IRPs include at least one additional scenario that emphasizes clean energy in its modeling, as well as more opportunities for solar and storage. 

• Noted dissatisfaction with Dominion's explanation of the explosion at Wateree Steam Station Unit 2, and want more information in the modified IRP. Wateree is a 685-megawatt plant located in Eastover that discharges pollution into the Wateree River. Unit 2 will be shut down in April 2022. 

• Ordered Dominion to work with the Office of Regulatory Staff, which represents utility customers, to develop an IRP stakeholder group to address a comprehensive coal retirement analysis, among many other issues. This will be an ongoing stakeholder group for this IRP, all future IRP updates, and for the 2023 full IRP.

In response, Will Harlan, senior representative for the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign in South Carolina, released the following statement:

“Public Service Commissioners were right to send this do-nothing plan back to the drawing board. Dominion’s customers deserve to have their electricity provided safely and affordably, without the burden of air and water pollution from dirty fuels, or the massive costs to keep obsolete coal plants running.

“Dominion has already lost $1.7 billion in customers’ money since 2012 by propping up coal plants that are so unreliable they provide power to South Carolina homes and businesses less than half the time. 

“The solution is clear: Dominion’s next plan must put families and businesses first, and put dangerous, polluting fossil fuels in the past where they belong.”