COLUMBIA – Customers of South Carolina’s state owned utility could again see their monthly power bills rise — by more than $13 a month over the next two years for the standard residential customer — as the early costs of a proposed natural gas plant and other construction projects come on the books.
Santee Cooper’s governing board voted unanimously Friday to begin the process of raising rates for the utility’s more than 220,000 direct customers, located in Berkeley, Georgetown and Horry counties.
Under the proposal, residential customers’ rates would increase 4.7% starting Feb. 1 of next year and another 4.6% in 2028, according to a statement from the utility.
Industrial and commercial customers would see rate hikes between 2.1% and 2.9% each of the two years.
These rates do not apply to the roughly 800,000 customers of the state’s rural power cooperatives, which buy electricity from Santee Cooper through a separate contract.
“These proposed changes are necessary to allow Santee Cooper to continue delivering the reliable, sustainable electricity that our customers expect,” CEO Jimmy Staton said in a statement. “We understand customers are concerned about rising prices generally, and we will keep our costs as low as possible while also guaranteeing system dependability for the future.”
To keep the lights on for a growing customer base, Santee Cooper executives say they need to build more power plants, including a planned new 2,200-megawatt power plant. That gas plant will be built in cooperation with Dominion Energy, on the site of a former coal plant along the Edisto River near Canadys.
But until the Canadys plant can be built, Santee Cooper has had to buy power from other producers “to bridge the gap,” Chief Financial Officer Tami Wilson told the board Friday.
That power is expensive, Wilson said, and the utility expects to spend nearly $90 million more on the open market in 2027 compared to what it has in the budget for 2026.
In December, a legislative panel gave Santee Cooper the initial nod to begin purchasing equipment for the Lowcountry gas plant and two other projects, which the utility will begin asking customers to pay for.
The utility was OK’d to borrow up to $700 million:
$120 million for the Canadys plant
$300 million for a pair of natural gas turbines on the site of an existing coal plant near Georgetown
$270 million for the expansion of an existing natural gas plant in Anderson County
That spending is part of what’s driving the rate increase, along with higher prices across the board for operations and maintenance, spokeswoman Mollie Gore said.
Santee Cooper will hold public comment meetings across multiple locations on July 27-28 and on Aug. 31, the last day customers will have to make comments.
The board will vote Oct. 30 on whether to enact an increase.
Santee Cooper’s residential bills already climbed about 13% last year. Residential customers who used 1,000 kilowatt-hours a month — considered the industry standard — were asked to pay about $16 more per month after the utility came out of a court-mandated rate freeze.
Power customers had sued the Moncks Corner-based utility after cost overruns and mismanagement led to the 2017 abandonment of the V.C. Summer nuclear expansion project. That lawsuit led to the five-year rate freeze that began in 2020.
Since then, Santee Cooper has added 4,270 new customers between January 2025 and April 2026.
As for the Canadys plant, Santee Cooper and Dominion still need the permission of state regulatorsbefore it can begin construction.
Of great concern to customers is a doubling of cost estimates for the gas plant. Those estimates now sit at $5 billion — up from a $2.5 billion told to senators last August.
That early estimate was based on historical costs to build similar units. But prices have increased dramatically since then as utility companies globally rush to build similar plants, Staton said in December.
The state Public Service Commission is expected to issue its decision next month, Dominion Energy spokeswoman Rhonda O’Banion told the SC Daily Gazette.
Meanwhile, Dominion is in the midst of its own application for a rate hike.
If approved by regulators, Dominion’s South Carolina residential customers who use 1,000 kilowatt-hours a month — considered the industry standard — would see another $20 tacked on to their current monthly bill, Dominion’s regulatory manager John Raftery previously told the Gazette.
That would take average bills from about $157 a month to just shy of $177, starting in July 2026. This does not include potential increases for cost of fuel, which can be added to bills along the way.
The next and final public hearings in Dominion’s case are scheduled for 10 a.m. and 5 p.m. on May 12 at the Public Service Commission’s office in Columbia.