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Dive Brief:
Duke Energy’s request to raise residential electricity rates by 11.6% in North Carolina faced scrutiny from state regulators during a seven-hour hearing on Wednesday, with commissioners and stakeholder representatives questioning the utility’s financial logic and its treatment of data centers versus residential customers.
North Carolina Utilities Commissioner Tommy Tucker noted that Duke’s large-load queue is 70% data centers and asked how other customers are expected to pay for “roughly $100 billion” in investments by 2035. “I understand the payouts from the data centers running 24/7/365, I understand the profitability there for Duke and the return on investment,” he said. “But then with my customer shoes on, we're in the middle of a rate case, so I don't see how you can say that we're benefiting customers.”
Thomas Heath, corporate finance director at Duke Energy Business Services, said that a “different capital structure that would lower this rate request would result in a lower revenue requirement for customers today, but they're going to trade that lower cost today for higher costs in the future.”
