NC Supreme Court sides with Duke Energy & Utilities Commission

The N.C. Supreme Court affirmed today that the state Utilities Commission was right to authorize a 10.2 percent return on equity for Duke Energy Carolinas. In so doing, the court disagreed with State Attorney General Roy Cooper and North Carolina Waste Awareness and Reduction Network (NC WARN) position that Duke’s calculations were based on a distorted methodology.

In response, Jim Warren, Executive Director of NC WARN  said, “It is deeply regrettable that, in today’s ruling, the NC Supreme Court has allowed Duke Energy to continue rigging electricity rates against small customers based on the single hottest hour of the year.”

At issue was, as the court wrote, “whether the [Utility] Commission’s use of the single coincident peak (“1CP”) cost-of-service methodology unreasonably discriminated against residential customers.”

In its decision, the court wrote, “Because we conclude that the Commission made sufficient findings of fact regarding the impact of changing economic conditions upon customers, that the use of 1CP was supported by substantial evidence, and that no improper costs were included in the Commission’s order, we affirm.”

The full decision can be read here.
Read the background on NC WARN’s position here.

 

 

 

 

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About Jeff Fobes
As a long-time proponent of media for social change, my early activities included coordinating the creation of a small community FM radio station to serve a poor section of St. Louis, Mo. In the 1980s I served as the editor of the "futurist" newsletter of the U.S. Association for the Club of Rome, a professional/academic group with a global focus and a mandate to act locally. During that time, I was impressed by a journalism experiment in Mississippi, in which a newspaper reporter spent a year in a small town covering how global activities impacted local events (e.g., literacy programs in Asia drove up the price of pulpwood; soybean demand in China impacted local soybean prices). Taking a cue from the Mississippi journalism experiment, I offered to help the local Green Party in western North Carolina start its own newspaper, which published under the name Green Line. Eventually the local party turned Green Line over to me, giving Asheville-area readers an independent, locally focused news source that was driven by global concerns. Over the years the monthly grew, until it morphed into the weekly Mountain Xpress in 1994. I've been its publisher since the beginning. Mountain Xpress' mission is to promote grassroots democracy (of any political persuasion) by serving the area's most active, thoughtful readers. Consider Xpress as an experiment to see if such a media operation can promote a healthy, democratic and wise community. In addition to print, today's rapidly evolving Web technosphere offers a grand opportunity to see how an interactive global information network impacts a local community when the network includes a locally focused media outlet whose aim is promote thoughtful citizen activism. Follow me @fobes

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