The Office of Regulatory Officials of South Carolina, whose stated mission is to represent South Carolinians in public service matters before the Public Service Commission, hired a lawyer who previously represented Dominion Energy, a major state gas and electricity company .
The lawyer, Benjamin Mustian, of Willoughby & Hoefer, represented Dominion on its list of avoided solar energy costs, a process in which the utility selected solar facilities and proposed offering them some of the lowest payments known in the country. Mustian worked for the Office of Regulatory Staff (ORS) from 2004 to 2006 before leaving for Willoughby & Hoefer, where he spent more than a decade representing utilities. Willoughby & Hoefer was a long-standing law firm for SCANA, which was later purchased by Dominion when the VC Summer nuclear project fell apart.
“ORS hired Ben because he is a good lawyer with over 16 years of experience in public utility law,” ORS executive director Nanette Edwards told the Energy and Policy Institute. “Ben previously worked at ORS and knows the people here and the type of work we do. He’s not working on anything related to Dominion right now, nor do we expect him to do it for the next 12 months, if not more. “
The ORS has been scrutinized in recent years for its inability to protect South Carolina taxpayers, since the VC Summer nuclear construction project failed, leaving customers waiting for billions. The Base Load Review Law, supported by the concessionaire, essentially eliminated the ORS ‘ability to hold utilities accountable for their promises in the summer of VC. Lawmakers renewed the ORS’s mission in 2018, placing greater emphasis on its role of oversight on behalf of taxpayers. Hiring a former concessionaire attorney to be a concessionaire watchman raises new questions about ORS ‘adherence to its updated mission.
In August 2019, the South Carolina Public Service Commission (PSC) was criticized for hiring a consultant, Pegasus Global Holdings, to work on solar issues. Pegasus had close ties to Duke Energy and Dominion Energy, which appeared to be at odds with a requirement in the Freedom of Energy Act that the consultant be a “qualified independent third party”. The PSC later reversed its decision and dismissed Pegasus after the Charleston Post and Courier reported the apparent conflict of interest.
ORS has already been criticized for staffing decisions after Edwards hired former CEO Dukes Scott on a $ 4,000-a-month contract after he was fired for failing to protect the South Carolinians from summer-related fee increases of U. Scott’s contract ended after The State published this story
Dominion’s anti-solar postures increase anger
Since entering South Carolina in early 2019 and promising checks for $ 1,000 that never arrived, Dominion’s tenure as an electric utility in the state has been marked by controversy. The rate hike at the dealership stopped after intense pressure from Governor McMaster. The PSC rejected Dominion’s long-term plan for being too heavy on coal and hostile to clean energy. Dominion proposed some of the lowest payments for large-scale solar projects in the country and, more recently, tried to eliminate net metering. Net metering is a tariff structure that compensates customers for electricity, usually from the solar roof, which they sell to other customers through the power grid.
In late December 2020, Dominion proposed to increase the basic service fee for solar customers to $ 19.50 per month, compared to non-solar customers who pay $ 9 per month. The concessionaire also proposed a monthly “solar subscription fee”, which would add another $ 5.40 per kilowatt (kW). Together, the two fees can cost the average solar energy owner more than $ 750 a year, according to an article by PV Magazine.
Similar fees in other jurisdictions have been overturned by regulators or courts. Kansas Evergy targeted solar customers in 2018 with a demand charge that was later overturned by the Kansas Supreme Court. The Michigan Public Service Commission (PSC) rejected DTE’s attempt to charge monthly fees per kW, saying that the concessionaire “depended on a deficiency in distribution revenue and not any cost to serve.” The Commission said that DTE “based the charge on the size of the customer’s system, not on the actual use of the customer,” which was evidence of its failure to use an industry-accepted cost-of-service methodology when setting fees.
South Carolina defenders have feared, since the 2018 SCANA-Dominion merger, that Dominion would oppose the growing solar industry in the state, as it did in Virginia.
“Dominion has not proven that it would adopt what the southern Carolinians need most: aggressive energy efficiency and demand-side management and […] affordable renewable energy such as solar and wind, ”said Sara Barczak, then regional director of defense for the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, said at the time.
The Domain’s criticism was not limited to defenders of solar energy. A major industrial customer, Bridgestone, filed a complaint arguing that Dominion was running slowly on renewable energy and blocking the tire manufacturer’s ability to use a $ 2.7 million solar project at its Aiken County facility.
Header image source: Nuclear Regulatory Commission