Georgia Public Service Commission balks at speeding up the review of the Plant Vogtle cost to customers

ATLANTA — Georgia’s utility regulating agency voted unanimously Tuesday, Aug. 18, to approve $674 million in spending on the Plant Vogtle nuclear expansion Georgia Power Co. reported incurring during the last half of 2019.

But the state Public Service Commission rejected a PSC staff recommendation to start discussing how much of the project’s cost the utility’s customers will be forced to absorb when the first of two new reactors under construction at the site south of Augusta goes into operation late next year.

The PSC has been signing off on Georgia Power’s spending on the $25 billion project in six-month increments since the agency approved the nuclear expansion in 2009.

Following a series of delays that set the work back five years and drove up the price tag from an original estimate of $14 billion, the commission voted in 2017 to hold off any decisions on whether the cost overruns were “prudent” and, thus, could be passed on to customers, until after the new reactors are finished.

But the project’s critics, including consumer and environmental advocacy groups, have been pushing the PSC to take up the impact on customers sooner.

On Tuesday, Aug. 18, the commission’s Public Interest Advocacy Staff recommended the PSC start considering the issue when Georgia Power presents its next semiannual Vogtle Construction Monitoring

(VCM) report, due by the end of this month.

But Commissioner Tricia Pridemore argued now is too soon to start discussing the project’s ultimate impact on customer bills. She proposed an amendment to the staff’s recommendation to limit Tuesday’s (Aug. 18) vote to approving the $674 million in spending from the last six months of last year.

“It’s premature to talk about rates and ratemaking,” she said. “We’re 14 months out from [the] Unit 3 [reactor] coming on line.”

Commissioner Lauren “Bubba” Mcdonald sided with the PSC staff’s recommendation to begin considering the cost issue sooner rather than later.

“I don’t think any time is too early for us to start looking at what to expect when Unit 3 comes on line,” he said. “I don’t like surprises.”

But the rest of the commission sided with Pridemore and adopted her amendment by a 4-1 vote. The PSC then unanimously approved the $674 million in spending reported by Georgia Power.

The company maintains the project can be completed under the current timetable, with Unit 3 going into service in November 2021 and Unit 4 the following November. The two new reactors then would join two reactors built at Vogtle during the 1980s.

But independent experts retained as consultants by the PSC’S staff testified earlier this summer the schedule is likely to slip further behind and that the final cost probably will go up by at least $1 billion.