Santee Cooper approves secret reform plan meant to avoid possible sale
Santee Cooper has a secret plan to reform itself and stave off a possible sale by the S.C. General Assembly, but the details will remain secret until next year.
The 85-year-old state-owned utility’s board approved the proposal after discussing it privately during a special meeting Thursday.
The plan, engineered by new Santee Cooper CEO Mark Bonsall and his top deputy, Charlie Duckworth, will be submitted to the state Monday, alongside a handful of competing offers from for-profit power companies and other firms that want to purchase or take over the debt-saddled agency.
All of those bids are supposed to be confidential while the state Department of Administration evaluates the offers and prepares a report on them to the General Assembly, due in January.
State lawmakers will consider those offers next year as they search for a solution to Santee Cooper’s nuclear fiasco.
Santee Cooper amassed $4 billion in debt on a decade-long project with Cayce-based SCE&G to expand the V.C. Summer nuclear power plant in Fairfield County before it abandoned the over-budget and well-behind venture in July 2017.
Now the 2 million South Carolinians in all 46 counties who rely on Santee Cooper’s electricity face higher power bills over the next four decades as the utility pays down that debt.
After years of debate, lawmakers have agreed to explore selling the utility or allowing another firm to take it over and run it more efficiently. That debate will take center stage at the State House in 2020.
A handful of suitors are expected to submit bids to purchase the utility, including North Carolina-based Duke Energy, which already serves 760,000 customers in South Carolina’s Upstate and Pee Dee regions, and Florida-based NextEra Energy, which has no operations in the Palmetto State.
Lawmakers also gave Santee Cooper an opportunity to submit its own counteroffer, explaining how it would improve if allowed to stay state owned.
Already this year, the agency has rankled the Department of Administration and some state legislators by publicly touting plans to freeze rates for five years and pay down debt — moves critics said could discourage offers from potential buyers.
This story was originally published November 21, 2019 at 10:48 AM.
