Duke Energy building unneeded power plants, group claims

Duke Energy and other utilities in the Southeast are building power plants that aren’t needed, gouging consumers, a Durham advocacy group said Tuesday in a federal complaint.

NC WARN asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to order an investigation of the billions of dollars the group says are being wasted.

WARN contends that utilities could buy power from each other instead of building new plants that often sit idle. Utilities, it says, are monopolies that thwart competition.

Duke responded that WARN, a critic of coal-fired power plants, “is now criticizing Duke Energy for building new, cleaner, natural gas-fired and solar power plants to replace the 35 coal-fired units that the company has closed since 2011.”

North Carolina’s Utilities Commission has repeatedly rejected similar arguments from WARN in the past, Duke said. The state’s Public Staff, which advocates for customers, has supported the company’s power plant construction and reserve margins, it added.

FERC has urged utilities to voluntarily form interstate power-moving agreements called regional transmission organizations. But regulators in southern states have never warmed to the idea of ceding authority to RTOs.

Utilities in the Southeast hold power capacity reserves 24 percent to 37 percent higher than their peak demand during the year, twice as high as the national average, WARN said.

WARN quoted estimates by a nonprofit regulatory agency, the North American Electric Reliability Corp., that the Carolinas reserve margin – the amount of unused capacity at peak demand – would be 24 percent this summer. The target margin was 15 percent.

That trend will continue, according to Duke’s 15-year power forecast, WARN said.

“Instead of building unneeded power plants, Duke and others should be forced to buy power from each other while using more solar power – which is perfectly suited to handle periods of high demand,” WARN said in a statement.

This story was originally published December 16, 2014 at 6:39 PM with the headline "Duke Energy building unneeded power plants, group claims."