Tag Archives: cost overruns

Activists Seek Emergency PSC Hearing to Reconsider Vogtle Reactors 3, 4

cwip-protestby Gloria Tatum
(APN) ATLANTA 4/24/17— On Tuesday, April 18, 2017, Glenn Carroll, Director of Nuclear Watch South (NWS), filed a request for an emergency public hearing with the Georgia Public Service Commission (PSC) to seek relief for ratepayers from the Construction Work in Progress (CWIP) tax on customers’ electric bills.

Georgia Power ratepayers have been paying in advance for the construction of Plant Vogtle nuclear reactor units 3 and 4 since 2009, because of the Georgia Legislature’s approval of CWIP via Senate Bill 31, which subverts the traditional ratemaking process and undermines the notion of Georgia Power shareholders taking any risk.

Read the whole story: Atlanta Progressive News

 

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Troubled nuclear plant costs rising for Savannah residents

Georgia_Power_ratepayerby Mary Landers
SAVANNAH 4/8/2017: The costs for Georgia Power’s troubled Plant Vogtle are adding up, but not for the utility or its investors.

Instead, ratepayers are already paying for the two new nuclear reactors, both of which may never produce a watt of electricity. How much have customers already dished out? For southside Savannah customer Cornelia Stumpf, the Vogtle bills already total more than $500.

Read the whole story: Savannah Morning News

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The High Cost of Ignoring Risk

www.usnews.comby Ryan Alexander
4/6/2017: Last week, Westinghouse Electric Co. announced that it will be filing for bankruptcy. Westinghouse, a subdivision of Toshiba Corporation, is in the process of building two AP1000 nuclear reactors for a power plant known as Plant Vogtle in Georgia. In fact, Westinghouse is bankrupt largely because of Vogtle. The project is a mess, and thanks to the $8.3 billion worth of loan-guarantees federal taxpayers have put into the project, courtesy of the Department of Energy, we are the ones who are going to take the hit if the whole things goes belly up.

In 2008, when the project originally applied for a federally backed loan guarantee, it was estimated that the two reactors under construction would begin commercial operation in April 2016 and 2017, respectively, and cost $14.3 billion. Instead of being completed this month, the project is less than halfway done, more than 39 months behind schedule, and at least $3.3 billion over budget. Now this.

Read the whole story: U.S. News

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Vogtle’s Nuclear Expansion in Question after Westinghouse Bankruptcy Filing

vogtle-3by Gloria Tatum
(APN) ATLANTA 4/5/17— Westinghouse Electric Corporation, the designer and builder of the AP1000 nuclear reactors under construction in Georgia and South Carolina, has filed for Chapter 11 reorganization bankruptcy, putting the future of the nuclear power industry in jeopardy.

Clean energy advocates hope this bankruptcy will be a wooden stake in the heart of the so-called “nuclear renaissance” that finally kills it, including the incomplete new reactor units 3 and 4 at Plant Vogtle.

Read the whole story: Atlanta Progressive News

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PSC’s McDonald: Non-existent nuke shouldn’t cost customers $175 million

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by Russell Grantham
ATLANTA 6/3/16 —At least one of Georgia’s utility regulators says he doesn’t think Georgia Power’s customers should have to foot a $175 million bill up front to study a potential site for a new nuclear plant near Columbus.

Commissioner Lauren “Bubba” McDonald told fellow members of the Public Service Commission Thursday that he plans to introduce a motion in the future that would deny the company’s request for the study funding.

McDonald said his motion wouldn’t prevent Georgia Power from going ahead with the study, but it’s “premature” to ask customers to pay for it before 2019.

Read the whole article: Atlanta Journal-Constitution

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Unofficial Business: Georgia Power aims to dump its overruns on you

022215-nuke-price-bs18by Matt Kempner
ATLANTA 4/13/16 — What do you call overruns on a project that’s more than three years delayed and at least $1.7 billion over budget?

Reasonable and prudent. At least if you are Georgia Power and you want customers to swallow every penny of the mistakes that would otherwise be the utility monopoly’s responsibility for its adventures in nuclear expansion.

“Every dollar, and every day, that has been invested has been necessary to complete these new units safely and correctly,” Georgia Power CEO Paul Bowers asserted in a recent filing to state regulators.

The company uses the words “prudent” and “reasonable” a lot in the filing because that’s the legal measure of whether the extra costs can be pushed onto customers’ monthly power bills for the company’s troubled Plant Vogtle expansion.

Read the whole article: Atlanta Journal-Constitution

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Lawsuit targets Duke Energy Florida, FPL over higher rates for nuclear power projects

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by Robert Trigaux
TAMPA 2/23/16 — A class action lawsuit was filed against Duke Energy Florida and Florida Power & Light alleging the monopoly electricity providers force millions of Florida customers to pay unlawful charges in connection with their electricity rates to fund the companies’ nuclear power plant projects, some of which have been abandoned.

The suit was brought Monday by the law firm Hagens Berman in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida. It accuses Duke Energy Florida and FPL of overcharging through unconstitutional price hikes that increase customers’ electricity bills in order to fund nuclear construction costs.

The issue ranks among the most controversial in recent Florida history, forcing customers of monopoly utilities to take on the financial risk of building nuclear power plants, projects prone to extreme cost overruns. Such utility projects historically have been financed by banks and Wall Street, with the risks borne by Duke and FPL shareholders, not by ratepayers.

Read the whole article: Tampa Bay Times

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HB 931 seeks end to ratepayer subsidy of nuclear construction in Georgia

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by Gloria Tatum
(APN) ATLANTA 2/17/16 — A pro-consumer bill, HB 931, co-sponsored by State Rep. Karla Drenner (D-Avondale), calls for an end to the Nuclear Construction Cost Recovery (NCCR) surcharge on Georgia Power electric bills after March 2017.

NCCR is a statewide surcharge that all Georgia Power residential and small business electricity customers pay every month.

It is about eight percent of one’s total bill with additional periodic rate increases.

Georgia Power’s two new nuclear reactors, Vogtle 3 and 4, originally were scheduled for completion in 2017, and at that time the surcharge was to expire.

However, Georgia Power is over three years behind schedule, and almost three billion dollars over-budget, with only 26 percent of the construction complete.

Read the whole article: Atlanta Progressive News

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Renewables rise in Georgia Power plan

Southern-AGL.JPEG-0b4bdby Russell Grantham
ATLANTA 2/13/16 — Renewable fuels are poised to grow from a footnote into a small but meaningful part of the picture at Georgia’s biggest electric utility.

By 2020 solar, wind, biomass and hydro will account for 10 percent of Georgia Power’s fuel mix, according to a new long-term plan the company recently filed with state regulators. That’s up from about 7 percent this year, or just 2 percent not counting hydro. In 2005, non-hydro renewables were not even counted in the mix.

Critics say the pace is still too slow. And at least one questions the utility’s overall goal of boosting its capacity buffer — the extra juice it could generate during a severe heat wave or power outages — at a time when demand has been flattened by slower economic growth and better efficiency.

Read the whole article: Atlanta Journal-Constitution

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Georgia Power seeks approval of higher costs at Plant Vogtle

15066713by Walter C. Jones
ATLANTA 1/23/16 — Georgia Power Company wants regulators to bless its share in more than $900 million in cost overruns incurred so far in building two nuclear reactors at the Plant Vogtle generating facility near Augusta.

The company denies its request amounts to approval of the overruns. At least one regulator said his agency can ignore the request until the reactors are generating electricity. And he estimates the impact of the request to be as high as $2.5 billion in added costs to electricity customers.
Company lawyers filed a formal request Thursday seeking approval by the Public Service Commission of the utility’s contract with the new builders.

Georgia Power, which owns 45.7 percent of Vogtle, and the utilities that own the rest of the plant signed an agreement with Westinghouse and with Chicago Bridge & Iron’s Stone & Webster division to design and build two reactors for $6.8 billion. Various problems led to delays and cost overruns, prompting the owners and the builders to sue each in other in 2013 over who would pay the added costs.

Read the whole article: Augusta Chronicle

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