ATLANTA: State defers showdown on Ga. nuclear plant costs | Business | The News Tribune

ATLANTA — A debate over the rising cost of building a first-of-its-kind nuclear plant in Georgia will be pushed far into the future.

Regulators at the Public Service Commission were facing a legal dilemma ever since Southern Co. subsidiary Georgia Power asked in February to raise its construction budget for building two more nuclear reactors at Plant Vogtle by $737 million to $6.85 billion.

That request raised expectations that PSC staffers would seek this month to block the utility from passing along some of its costs to customers, but that didn’t happen. Instead, Southern Co. and Georgia utility officials recently reached a preliminary deal that would postpone a major budget debate until at least January 2018, when the first reactor is projected to come online.

A glimmer of the state’s strategy emerged Friday in a report filed by nuclear engineer William Jacobs Jr. and PSC analyst Steven Roetger. Their report lays out the reasons why regulators could try to force the utility to absorb losses because of construction mishaps, but it stops short of recommending that regulators reject any spending now.

Georgia Power spokesman Mark Williams said all of the company’s spending on the project has been in the best interests of its customers.

The utility’s request to raise its budget triggered a quandary focused on the burden of proof.

If the utility exceeded its budget, then the burden was on Georgia Power to persuade regulators that the excess spending should be passed along to its customers. But if the PSC voted to raise the project budget, then the law would assume Georgia Power was entitled to collect all of its budgeted costs from customers, so long as regulators couldn’t prove the spending was imprudent, reckless or somehow criminal.

via ATLANTA: State defers showdown on Ga. nuclear plant costs | Business | The News Tribune.