PSC Leader Won’t Okay Rate Hike For Southern Company

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) – Southern District Public Service Commissioner Leonard Bentz says he won’t vote for any rate hike that would allow the Southern Co. to recover more than $2.4 billion from ratepayers despite new cost overruns at the Kemper County plant.

Mississippi regulators set a rate hike cap on the project when it was approved.

Southern Co. said this week that shareholders will absorb $450 million in losses incurred from building the new coal-fired power plant in Mississippi, raising the total write-offs on the construction project to nearly $1 billion.

Bentz tells The Sun Herald (http://bit.ly/16k4hBN) that he is glad the company wasn’t trying to pass those new cost overruns on to ratepayers.

Opponents of the project have long criticized the company’s use of coal and its costs.

 

 

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