A utility consultant says Georgia Power wants to charge customers too much when the company starts buying significantly more electricity from other places.
Philip Hayet, president of Hayet Power Systems Consulting, said the amount that Georgia Power wants to charge customers starting in 2015 should be cut in half.
“We have a severe economic situation going on,” Hayet told the Georgia Public Service Commission.
Georgia Power said it will have to start buying wholesale power from other places to maintain a stable grid if new environmental rules force it to close several coal and oil-fired units. Georgia Power said it will close two coal-fired units at Plant Branch and an oil-fired one at Plant Mitchell to meet some environmental rules. The company said it may have to close more coal and oil-fired units to meet additional federal regulations, which are expected Dec. 16.
To offset the potential loss of electricity from closing more units, Georgia Power wants to buy wholesale electricity from other power producers, including its own wholesale affiliate, Southern Power.
Georgia Power wants to charge its residential, commercial and industrial customers a flat fee of $2.50 a kilowatt per year to compensate the utility for these purchased power contracts, citing state law and commission precedent. The amount, once divided up among all of those customers, would be "minuscule" on customer bills, the utility said.
"We feel like it's fair, and it's consistent with what we've requested before and with what the commission has approved in the past," Georgia Power spokeswoman Lynn Wallace said.
Hayet said to charge customers an additional fee and blame it on environmental regulations is basically saying, "it's not our fault, it's somebody else's," he said. "The company could have requested zero, but the company didn't do that. The company requested additional profits."
The utility also said meeting the new U.S. Environmental Protection Agency regulations to cut toxic emissions will cost from $741 million to nearly $3 billion and lead it to close or refit six additional coal or oil-fired plants by 2015. Customers could pay for these costs in the form of higher electric bills.
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