It’s Monday, and that’s when we like to take a look at current business issues that are trending across our state and discuss them with one of our fellow news media friends. This week, Mike Switzer interviews Jessica Holdman, a reporter with the South Carolina Daily Gazette in Columbia, SC. Jessica tells us about a Spartanburg data center creating its own power but much more than originally projected. She also tells us about Duke Energy asking the SC Supreme Court to overturn the Public Service Commission’s ruling that Duke must wait a year before raising rates. And finally she updates us on the status of the $150 million needed to pay for cost overruns at the Scout Motors site in Blythewood, SC.
TRANSCRIPT:
Switzer: Hello and welcome to the South Carolina Business Review. This is Mike Switzer. It's Monday and that's when we like to take a look at current business issues that are trending across our state and discuss them with one of our fellow news media friends. This week we have Jessica Holdman, a reporter with the South Carolina Daily Gazette, a non profit news agency. And she joins us by phone now from her office in Columbia. Jessica, welcome back to the program.
Holdman: Thanks, Mike.
Switzer: So tell us what's showing up on your radar this week.
Holdman: Well, Mike, we've got a few headlines in the utility and power generation sphere going on. I think you and I have probably talked before about a data center in Spartanburg County. this one's being developed by Northmark Strategies and what they want to do is they want to make their own power. Now we've heard the argument against data centers that they take so much energy and it's showing up on power customers bills. Well, this company wanted to avoid that by producing their own power, but they've seen some challenges. There's been some environmental and citizens groups that are worried about air pollution from the generators they would use to do this. In this past week or so, the Public Service Commission said that actually the company's not subject to the same regulatory process as power plants are in the state. They can just go through the environmental review process.
Switzer: I guess they're not considering clean energy.
Holdman: Right. So this would be a natural gas fired turbines. Really big concern that the environmental groups raised is that when they came in they were saying, oh, we just need 50 megawatts. Then they came back and said actually it's going to be more than that. They actually upped that to needing 450 megawatts worth of generators on site. So drastic change in the amount of energy being produced certainly is. All right.
Switzer: You mentioned more in the electric, utility, sector.
Holdman: Absolutely. Duke Energy was the first utility in the state to opt to use a new mechanism that legislators passed here couple legislative sessions ago and that was setting up a process where utility companies could raise their rates on an annual basis without having to go through the full blown regulatory process. They do still have to make their argument before regulators, but it's not as long and drawn out. And when they went before the Public Service Commission, the commissioner said, well, you can do this but you're going to have to wait. They wanted the utility to have essentially a base year before they could go in and ask for a rate increase. Duke Energy is, saying that's not the way that the law was written, so they're asking the Supreme Court to step in.
Switzer: Okay, so do we know when that decision might come down?
Holdman: Well, that's really hard to say. When the court decides to take up that case remains to be seen.
Switzer: All right, Jessica, we have time for one more. What else have you found?
Holdman: One other thing we've talked about on the show in the past, Mike, is the cost overruns at the Scout Motors plant. There were some questions about whether the state would step in and cover those overruns. There was some money put in the budget with the stipulation that the money couldn't be paid out until a full blown investigation had taken place. Governor in his veto powers, stepped in and said, you know, you can have this study conducted, but we don't need to be waiting to cut that check. Most of those cost overruns were tied to environmental remediation, fixing wetlands to make up for those that were lost when the site was leveled.
Switzer: All right, so I guess this $150 million, now it's paid and the, controversy over that with Scout Motors is over.
Holdman: yeah, I mean, I'm sure we'll still see that investigation into how we got there go forward, but the question of will they or won't they has been answered.
Switzer: Well, Jessica, thank you so much for the update.
Holdman: Thanks, Mike.
Switzer: Jessica Holdman is a reporter with the South Carolina Daily Gazette. She spoke to us by phone from her office in Columbia. We will have a link to the nonprofit news source in our state posted at our webpage so you can learn more south Carolina public radio.org or you can hear this show again. And you can hear us again wherever you find podcasts with the South Carolina Business Review. This is Mike Switzer.
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