{"id":7166,"date":"2013-12-15T10:47:16","date_gmt":"2013-12-15T15:47:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/?p=7166"},"modified":"2013-12-25T10:44:25","modified_gmt":"2013-12-25T15:44:25","slug":"duke-spokesman-for-closed-nuke-rate-hikes-touts-new-plant-for-sabal-trail-gas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2013\/12\/duke-spokesman-for-closed-nuke-rate-hikes-touts-new-plant-for-sabal-trail-gas.html","title":{"rendered":"Duke spokesman for closed nuke rate hikes touts new plant for Sabal Trail gas"},"content":{"rendered":"

\r\nWould you trust a salesman of failed nukes to sell you a gas plant?\r\nIs eminent domain on your property and your community “reasonable and prudent”\r\nso Duke can make\r\n\r\nanother bad bet, this time on methane<\/a>,\r\nafter Citi GPS and Edison Electric Institute and former FERC Chair Jon Wellinghoff all warned them that solar is going to overtake every other power source within only a few years?\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nThat’s the same Sterling Ivey who announced 2 August 2013 that\r\nDuke’s Levy County nuclear plants were cancelled\r\n(\r\nDuke Energy Cancels $24.7B Florida Nuke Plant Project<\/a>,\r\nENRSoutheast,\r\n08\/02\/2013,\r\nby Scott Judy).\r\nA few days later,\r\nFlorida PSC approved a rate hike to pay for Duke’s\r\n\r\nforever-closed Crystal River nuclear plant<\/a>.\r\nDave Heller wrote for WTSP \r\n 5 August 2013,\r\n\r\nFlorida regulators OK Duke Energy nuclear rate hike<\/a>,\r\n

\r\n

\r\n“These are reasonable and prudent costs as determined by the\r\ncommission that the company has invested in both of these plants,\r\nCrystal River and Levy, and state law allows us the opportunity to\r\nrecover those costs and that’s what we’re doing at this time,” said\r\nDuke Energy spokesman Sterling Ivey.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nDuke Energy plans to charge the extra 89 cents for the broken\r\nCrystal River nuclear plant in Citrus County starting in January,\r\n2014 through 2021. The total cost from that 89-cent rate hike would\r\nbe $265 million over the seven years.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n“The 89 cents that’s going on customer bills is related to expenses\r\nthat we’ve had at the Crystal River nuclear plant to upgrade the\r\nmegawatts at the plant, costs that have already been determined to\r\nbe reasonable and prudent that we’re collecting on at this time,”\r\nsaid Ivey.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nThe company decided to cancel its Levy County nuclear plant project\r\nbecause the cost of natural gas has dropped so much, Ivey said, and\r\nalso because of delays in getting a license from the Nuclear\r\nRegulatory Commission.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nSure, it’s always somebody else’s fault when a utility makes a bad bet,\r\nand look who gets to cover those bad bets: the ratepayers.\r\n

\r\nAnd it’s not just Crystal River:\r\n\r\nDuke gets to charge extra for\r\nthe canceled Levy County nukes, too<\/a>,\r\nas Trent Kelly wrote for WCJB 18 October 2013,\r\n\r\nDuke Energy Customers to Pay More for Failed Nuclear Plant Projects<\/a>,\r\n

\r\n

\r\nDuke Energy officials say the charge was needed to avoid any wild\r\nfluctuations in customers’ future bills. “Without the agreement\r\nbeing approved, customers would have seen stark increases in their\r\nbills,” said Sterling Ivey, a spokesman for Duke Energy.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\n\r\nAnd now Sterling Ivey and Duke<\/a>\r\nand FPL and Sabal Trail and Spectra want landowners and communities\r\nFlorida, Georgia, and Alabama, to pay for their bad gas pipe\r\nbet up front with our property and hazards to our communities.\r\nDoes that seem “reasonable and prudent” to you?\r\n

\r\nHow about we get on with solar power,\r\n\r\nCiti GPS spelled out in October<\/a>\r\nis going to rapidly overtake every other power source,\r\njust like\r\n\r\nprevious FERC Chair Jon Wellinghoff told us<\/a>.\r\nAs the electric utilities’ own think tank\r\n\r\nEdison Electric Institute warned them back January<\/a>,\r\ndistributed rooftop solar is already eating utilities’ free public service\r\ncommission-approved rate hike lunch.\r\nWhy should we let them keep eating extra at our expense\r\nwhen utilities could be getting on with solar for our\r\nbenefit and their profit?\r\n

\r\n -jsq\r\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Would you trust a salesman of failed nukes to sell you a gas plant? Is eminent domain on your property and your community “reasonable and prudent” so Duke can make another bad bet, this time on methane, after Citi GPS and Edison Electric Institute and former FERC Chair Jon Wellinghoff all warned them that solar […]","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[142,14,70,203,2,6124,104,6687],"tags":[701,909,8704,8728,6996,8751,8701,8699,8702,370,12,7,1884,562,8737,6076,6597,6966,7318,6],"class_list":["post-7166","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cwip","category-economy","category-ethics","category-florida","category-government","category-natural-gas-2","category-nuclear","category-pipeline-2","tag-crystal-river","tag-duke","tag-economy","tag-ethics","tag-fl-psc","tag-florida","tag-georgia","tag-government","tag-lake","tag-levy-county","tag-lowndes-area-knowledge-exchange","tag-lowndes-county","tag-methane","tag-natural-gas","tag-nuclear","tag-pipeline","tag-sabal-trail-transmission","tag-spectra-energy","tag-sterling-ivey","tag-valdosta"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-1RA","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7166","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7166"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7166\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7256,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7166\/revisions\/7256"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}