Hearings set to decide Vogtle’s final cost to Georgia Power customers

State utility regulators set a schedule Tuesday for a series of high-stakes hearings to decide how much more of Plant Vogtle’s expansion costs will fall to Georgia Power customers.

Georgia Power in July brought the first new nuclear reactor at the site near Augusta online and has said it expects to ultimately have spent nearly $10.2 billion dollars by the time it completes the second unit.

Last week, Georgia Power announced it had reached a preliminary deal with Georgia Public Service Commission (PSC) staff and some consumer advocacy groups to collect $7.6 billion of those in Vogtle costs from ratepayers. The rest would be absorbed by shareholders of its parent, Southern Company.

The hearings now set for later this year are for the five members of the PSC to determine whether those costs were “prudent and reasonable” and should be added to customers’ bills.

The schedule approved by the commission is as follows:

The abbreviated timeline includes fewer hearing days than were held to debate Georgia Power’s long-term energy plans or its electricity rate hikes last year. But it is similar to the schedule used to litigate its request to collect fuel costs from customers and in previous Vogtle proceedings.

The plan the commission ultimately approves is likely to resemble the tentative settlement the company struck last week.

Under that plan, Georgia Power says the average residential customer would see their bills go up by almost $9 per month. The rate hike would take effect the month after Vogtle’s second new nuclear reactor, Unit 4, begins providing electricity to Georgians. The company has said that is likely to happen later this year or in early 2024.

That rate increase would remain in place until at least 2025, when they could be tweaked again by the PSC. But Georgia Power customers are likely to be paying at least some amount for Vogtle’s expansion in their monthly bills for the entire life of the reactors, which the company estimates will be 60 to 80 years.

The Vogtle expansion has been dogged by delays and cost overruns. The first of Vogtle’s new units finished seven years late and the second new reactor is more than six years behind schedule. The total price tag for the project has swelled to more than $35 billion.

Georgia Power owns the largest share of the new units at 45.7%, followed by Oglethorpe Power (30%), the Municipal Electric Authority of Georgia (22.7%) and Dalton Utilities (1.6%).

Georgia Power’s customers started paying for Vogtle in 2011, long before either unit produced any electricity. By the time Unit 4 is complete, the PSC’s staff has estimated the average residential customer will have paid almost $1,000 for the project. That’s double what they would have paid if the reactors had been finished on time.

The potential $9 rate increase comes on top of a separate, $5 hike that began hitting customer bills in August after Vogtle’s first new reactor, Unit 3, entered commercial service.

But those are not the only rate increases facing Georgia Power ratepayers.

The PSC approved a $16-a-month increase in May to cover the cost of fuel used at Georgia Power’s power plants and a $4 increase to its base electricity rates, which kicked in on Jan. 1. Two additional rate increases will take effect at the start of 2024 and 2025.

All told, the average residential customer using roughly 1,000 kilowatt hours of electricity a month may see their monthly bills go up by a total of $45 by 2025, according to estimates from the Southern Environmental Law Center.

A note of disclosure

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