(WSPA) – Duke Energy says they have agreed to a smaller rate hike for one residential fee at the recommendation of the South Carolina Office of Regulatory Staff.
According to the SC ORS, Duke Energy’s basic facility charge for residential customers would go from $8.29 to $11.96, a 44% increase. The company had previously proposed a 238% increase to $28.
The average residential monthly bill would increase by 3.78% instead of the previous 12.5% which was proposed by Duke Energy, with the changes to the basic facility charge.
Duke Energy says the change only addresses the issue with the basic facility charge and the company maintained their position on all of the other issues in the case.
The agreement still has to be approved by the Public Service Commission of South Carolina.
Concerned citizens packed meetings, overwhelmingly against the originally proposed rate hike.
Duke Energy released this statement on the changes:
We work to keep costs as low as possible for our customers and to avoid an increase to customer bills whenever possible, and we aggressively manage costs to delay the need to increase rates.
We are seeking this increase now because we have made significant investments in recent years to build a smarter energy infrastructure to meet the needs of a growing customer base, and to comply with rigid environmental requirements at the state and federal level. These investments help provide affordable, reliable and increasingly clean energy to customers, and are the main reason for the proposed increase.
We look forward to presenting our case to the Public Service Commission of South Carolina. They will ultimately determine what’s appropriate for customer rates based on a long-standing and very transparent public process for reviewing rate requests.