Utility’s plan for growth sparks public opposition

Friday, 06 July 2007

Page 2 of 2 Without the new plant, the utility has forecast that it will be 370 megawatts short of power by 2015 and 835 megawatts short by 2020. One megawatt is equivalent to the power needed to provide electricity to 500 homes. What that means, Varn warned, is that by the latter year, 417,500 homes could be wanting for the electricity their residents need for lights, cooking, laundry and other aspects of modern life. Adding to the utility’s concerns is that its projections are based only on trends in residential growth and development. The impact of future industrial growth—company relocations into the state or expansions—has not been taken into account. How significantly would that growth skew the numbers? One need only think of Berkeley County’s most ballyhooed new corporate citizen, Google, to get an idea. While Santee Cooper officials are legally barred from discussing how much power the search-engine giant will use at the server farm it is currently building at the Mount Holly Commerce Park, Wislinski said he’s been told by reliable sources that the facility will have a constant demand for 100 megawatts of power. That’s enough electricity to power 50,000 homes, he said. “The bottom line is as a forward-looking company, we need a lot of base-load power and, honestly, building a new power plant is one of the last options we looked at,” Varn said. While critics of the plant proposal believe Santee Cooper should opt instead for a larger commitment to renewable energy, Varn said the utility is already a state leader in that area. “We are the first and only utility in the state that even has a renewable program. We have solar power, nuclear power, we tap landfill gas, we have hydro power … and we’re also researching the feasibility to harnessing wind power,” Varn said. “The truth is, however, that as much as we’ve done in this area, we just don’t produce enough energy to rely on renewables to meet our rapidly expanding needs. “The other thing is having customers who take advantage of the renewable power we already produce. As heavily as we’ve promoted our program, only 15 percent of our customers purchase it. Another thing people point to is energy conservation, something we also actively promote, and as proud as we are of our record in that regard, the fact is we can’t force people to conserve.” If the project is approved by the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control and federal regulators, construction alone should create about 1,400 jobs over the next five to seven years. Once it’s operational, the plant will be staffed by about 100 full-time employees earning an average salary of $50,000 a year. A complete description of the project can be found online at www.santeecooper.com/peedeesite. “When this project is completed, this plant will be one of the cleanest power plants in the nation,” Varn said. “While it may sound dramatic, we firmly believe that any delay in this project will raise the cost of power, threaten our energy supply and discourage economic development.” << Start < Prev 1 2 Next > End >>