Dominion spent nearly $600K at State House before seeking rate hike
Dominion Energy’s proposed $322 million rate increase — about $20 more a month for the average customer — goes before state regulators this month.
Less visible is the nearly $600,000 the company spent on a State House push in 2025 that included lobbying and donations to lawmakers as a new law gave utilities more flexibility to raise rates.
The new law, called the Energy Security Act, allows Dominion and other utilities to seek smaller increases in customers’ rates more frequently and with less comprehensive review.
Leading up to the law’s passage last year, utilities said the change would allow them to recover the cost of building infrastructure to meet South Carolina’s growing power needs.
Dominion said Friday it is not using the law in its current request to raise rates but may do so in the future.
“Dominion Energy South Carolina has not elected to utilize the electric rate stabilization terms for our current rate case,” Dominion spokeswoman Rhonda O’Banion said in a statement. “We will continue to review the right timing in the best interest of our customers – including those on fixed incomes – who said they would prefer smaller, more manageable rate adjustments even if it means the increases or decreases occur more frequently.”
A hearing on Dominion’s proposed rate increase goes before the S.C. Public Service Commission May 12. The public can attend.
“Dominion Energy South Carolina has not elected to utilize the electric rate stabilization terms for our current rate case,” Dominion spokeswoman Rhonda O’Banion said in a statement. “We will continue to review the right timing in the best interest of our customers – including those on fixed incomes – who said they would prefer smaller, more manageable rate adjustments even if it means the increases or decreases occur more frequently.”
In 2025, while the bill was making its way through the State House, Dominion Energy paid its team of a dozen lobbyists nearly $490,000, public records show. That’s an almost $60,000 increase from what the company spent on lobbying efforts in 2024.
“As a company whose operations are subject to extensive regulation, Dominion Energy engages in the political process in support of smart public policy, which includes contributions to candidates from both parties,” O’Banion said. “Our goal is to participate in legislative and rule-making activities affecting our customers and business consistent with our corporate values and strategies, and to educate and inform public officials of the practical effects of public policy decisions and objectives they consider.”
The legislation Dominion was advocating for – and seeking to explain to lawmakers – went well beyond rate-setting. It also made it easier for utilities to recover the costs of new power plants and infrastructure and also changed the way regulators review those expenses.
Its three top-paid lobbyists worked for McGuireWoods Consulting, a multi-state lobbying firm that employs a roster of former S.C. political insiders, including former Gov. Jim Hodges who serves as its S.C. president.
Dominion’s political action committees or PACs also contributed more than $65,000 to lawmakers in 2025. That breaks down to:
- $25,000 to the S.C. House Republican Caucus
- $25,000 to the S.C. Senate Republican Caucus
- $15,000 to the House Democratic Caucus
- $1,500 to the S.C. General Assembly Women’s Caucus
Precisely how legislative caucuses spend money is not always clear from public reports, but it is generally distributed to the campaigns of individual lawmakers. The entire membership of the S.C. House of Representatives is up for election in November.
Dominion-aligned PACs also gave $25,000 in donations to dozens of S.C. lawmakers during last year’s legislative session records show, including leaders in the House and Senate and members of the House committee that considered the legislation that became the Energy Security Act.
The donations to lawmakers are not surprising, said Conor Harrison, a professor of economic geography at the University of South Carolina who studies energy and utility policy.
“I would say that almost always a utility will be, if not the largest, among the largest donors to state-level elections in every state across the U.S.,” Harrison said.
While it’s difficult to know if campaign donations lead to legislation passing, he said utilities often have significant influence over the legislation that governs their industry. Harrison said he once met a hardware store owner who won election to a rural seat in the Georgia Legislature. The next morning after his election win, he said there was a representative from Georgia Power waiting for him outside his store.
“My impression is that generally, there’s not a confrontational relationship between legislatures and utilities,” he said. “You can argue whether there should be.”
Lawmakers often defer to utilities as the de facto authorities on the industry and how best to meet the needs of their business, said John Brooker, vice president of policy and government relations with the Conservation Voters of South Carolina, an advocacy group focused on environmental policy. And there are fewer groups like his making a counterargument for lower rates, he added.
“Not to be overly cynical, but obviously there is an influence of money in politics,” Brooker said, noting that a company like Dominion has “a lawyer team the size of our entire organization.”
The General Assembly appears to be warming to utilities, a shift from the years after the 2017 collapse of the V.C. Summer nuclear project in Fairfield County — a failed multibillion-dollar expansion that left customers paying for reactors that were never completed.
As a result, utilities lost political clout and public trust, said Scott Elliott, an attorney with the S.C. Energy Users Committee, which represents large industrial customers and lobbies against rate hikes.
It was a stark contrast from a decade earlier when lawmakers had overwhelmingly backed the Base Load Review Act, a law that allowed utilities to raise rates in advance to pay for building those plants. But after V.C. Summer failed, Elliott said, utilities’ influence “was rock bottom.”
Now, with many new lawmakers in office, resistance to utilities’ influence appears to be fading, Elliott said. The ease with which the Energy Security Act passed is the proof, he added.
“The House has a higher turnover rate than you might imagine,” Elliott said. “There’s a fair number of House members who weren’t there when [V.C. Summer] failed, and certainly were not there for Base Load Review.”
If You Go
What: S.C. Public Service Commission hearing into Dominion rate increase proposal
Where: 101 Executive Center Drive #100, Columbia, SC 29210
When: 10 a.m. Tuesday, May 12, 2026
This story was reported in collaboration with SC Investigates, a nonprofit newsroom that partners with local journalists to produce accountability reporting in South Carolina.
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