Dive Brief:
- An agreement between regulatory staff, consumer advocates and large consumers has been reached to keep the R.E. Ginna nuclear facility in western New York operating.
- The settlement will be filed by Sept. 23, with comments due a week after that, RTO Insider reports.
- Exelon, which operates the struggling plant, said earlier this year it would need to almost double rates in order to remain profitable as it competes with low-cost natural gas and renewable energy.
Dive Insight:
Three administrative law judges for the New York Public Service Commission last week revised the schedule to consider a reliability support agreement aimed at keeping the Ginna Nuclear Power Plant in New York operating.
A compromise between the Ginna operating company and Rochester Gas & Electric, reached earlier this year, would add more than $200 million each year in costs and would require the plant to continue operating until at least September 2018.
"In this case, the Reliability Support Services Agreement filed by RG&E earlier this year would, if approved, result in a major rate increase," the administrative judges said in their order. "Therefore, an evidentiary hearing is required."
That hearing has been scheduled for Oct. 14, with initial briefs to be filed two weeks later.
The PSC in August approved a temporary 5.2% rate surcharge for Rochester-area consumers to prevent "rate shock" while the final price tag for Ginna operation was being negotiated. The interested parties were originally supposed to agree on a settlement by July 31, but asked for an extension on the timetable. PSC staff estimated that if the rate hike had waited until January, it would have amounted to about 10.4%
R.E. Ginna Nuclear Power Plant LLC is a subsidiary of Constellation Energy Nuclear Group, and the company has said the facility lost approximately $100 million from 2011 to 2013.
