Following nuclear build mess, South Carolina’s SCANA faces bad financial news

sfretwell@thestate.com, October 25, 2018 , COLUMBIA  SCANA, the struggling South Carolina-based utility staggered by the failure last year of its nuclear construction project, announced a better financial picture Thursday than it has in recent months.

……. SCANA, the parent company of SCE&G, has been criticized heavily since quitting the V.C. Summer nuclear construction project on July 31, 2017. The utility and its junior partner, the state-owned Santee Cooper utility, said last year they could no longer justify the project’s ever-increasing cost following the bankruptcy of chief contractor Westinghouse Electric. The two utilities spent $9 billion on two unfinished reactors.

Ratepayers and state policy makers were irate.

SCANA raised rates for its 728,000 electric customers to pay for the nuclear construction effort, charging those customers $2 billion. At one point, customers were paying an average of $27 a month for the nuclear project. However, the S.C. Legislature and Public Service Commission subsequently ordered the utility to lower its rates.

However, many issues related to the V.C. Summer collapse remain unresolved.

That has translated into bad financial news for the utility its shareholders…… https://www.thestate.com/news/business/article220579730.html