Proposed Duke Energy Carolinas rate hike is much smaller now

GREENVILLE — Electric customers across the Upstate might see a much smaller increase to their monthly bills next March, if state regulators approve a settlement on Duke Energy’s July rate hike proposal.

Residential customers using 1,000 kilowatt-hours per month would see an initial increase of 84 cents per month to their bills, from $136.82 to $137.66, starting March 1. In two years, that bill would then increase another $4.21 per month to $141.87.

Duke Energy Carolinas, the subsidiary of the Charlotte-based publicly traded company, has said the rate increase is primarily needed to cover the costs of improvements in grid reliability and resiliency the company has made to transmission and distribution systems, along with the increased cost of capital that’s needed to fund those improvements.

The increase — although arriving as the cost of living continues to climb — is much smaller than the initial hike pitched by Duke, which serves 680,000 customers across the Upstate. That proposal would’ve amounted to a $10.38 hike to $147.19 on a household’s 1,000 kWh monthly bill.

Overall, the annual revenue increase for Duke will amount to $74.2 million, instead of the initially proposed $150.5 million, according to the settlement.

The partial settlement, which was filed Nov. 11 with the S.C. Public Service Commission, was reached by Duke and a slew of co-intervenors, which included environmental, consumer and small business advocate groups, businesses, and state agencies tasked with representing the public interest.

Its stipulations are similar to a settlement proposed in October for a rate case involving Duke Energy Progress, the subsidiary that serves the Pee Dee region of the state.

“This settlement includes exciting provisions essential to helping South Carolinians in a time when costs of living are high,” said Kate Mixson, a senior attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center, which represented some of the environmental groups in the case. “As a result, customers will be able to better control their bills and reduce costs to the grid with energy efficiency and clean energy programs.”

Those provisions would require Duke to engage in a future PSC proceeding to consider how to protect residents from potential future costs tied with growing power needs, which are driven mostly by data centers and other “large load” users. There are other provisions for improving energy efficiency, including weatherization and solar plus battery programs.

Two sources of credits will help partially offset the raised bills for Duke customers, said Ryan Mosier, Duke Energy spokesperson.

That includes a fixed, two-year flowback of $100 million in federal tax credits that are expected to be awarded to Duke for producing energy from renewable sources like solar, nuclear and hydroelectric, and a $750,000, two-year annual shareholder-fund contribution.

“If approved, this agreement allows us to keep pace with the needs of a growing state, rather than falling behind, so we can continue to support reliability and long-term economic growth for the communities we serve,” Mosier said.

That increase, however, comes at a time when the cost of living has reached all-time highs in South Carolina.

When utilities and regulators raise rates — as with rising prices in general — those changes are felt the most by lower-income households and those on fixed incomes.

Rising energy costs aren’t unique to the Upstate, to Duke or to South Carolina. But in the Palmetto State, electric bills are expected to increase the most out of all but one U.S. state over the next decade. That’s thanks in part to a sweeping federal law that gutted clean energy incentives, which were expected to help bring down electric costs.

Duke’s proposed rate hike came on the heels of an August 2024 rate increase approved by the PSC, the company’s first in five years. That increase would’ve been larger, but it was split into two increases to stagger the price jump to households. The second piece will go into effect on Aug. 1, 2026.