How might the newly-approved Duke Energy merger impact your electric bill? The company says combining Duke Energy Carolinas in the western half of North Carolina and Duke Energy Progress in the east will save customers billions.
WFAE’s Zachary Turner sat down with Duke Energy spokesperson Bill Norton to learn more.
Zachary Turner: The NCUC North Carolina Utility Commission, approved an important transition for Duke Energy in the Carolinas. Tell me about this recent order.
Bill Norton: We currently have two separate utilities in the state: Duke Energy Carolinas, which is Charlotte, the central area of the state, and then Duke Energy Progress, which is generally the eastern half of the state, but also includes the Asheville area.
Most people don't realize that we still operate as separate utilities. They just think of one big Duke Energy. And operationally, we pretty much are, but because of federal regulations regarding transmission lines and other aspects, we had to keep operating the power plants and the grid — the wires that serve customers — we needed to plan for them and operate them separately.
So this will allow us to operate as a single utility going forward, starting Jan. 1.
Turner: So ultimately Duke Energy Carolinas in North Carolina will have a set of rates, and Duke Energy Carolinas in South Carolina will have its own set of rates?
Norton Exactly. And for current customers — Duke Energy Progress customers, for example — wondering what this means for them, nothing changes on Jan. 1, 2027.
This will all be reflected in rate cases going forward, in fuel filings going forward, and regulators will have 100% control over the pace of how those two sets of rates are integrated and ultimately become one.
Turner: Do you have a sense of, after you have this merger on Jan. 1, 2027, what's gonna be your suggestion for how long until we see former Duke Energy Progress customers paying the same as Duke Energy Carolinas customers? Or do we know?
Norton: We don't really know yet. We don't have that signal — if you will — from the utilities commission. And (I think) they are focused on making sure that this benefits customers. One of the terms of the settlement that we had with the public staff, the attorney general, the tech companies and environmental groups was to document the customer savings annually and present that to the utilities commission so they could see that, yes, the projected savings that we were talking about did in fact come to pass.
So, they're really focused on those nuts and bolts right now. I don’t think the commission is yet focused on the actual timetable for future rate integration. I think that's going to come as part of our next rate review after the one that we're currently going through.
Turner: In that first rate case, is this going to have an upward pressure? Is this going to have a downward pressure? How quickly are we going to see some sort of rate relief coming from this order?
Norton: It goes back to having to build fewer resources to meet future growth and protect reliability.
If you look at one of the things that we agreed to as part of the settlement, we took out 200 megawatts of battery storage, because that was an asset that everyone who was involved in the settlement agreed, 'yeah, we don't need as much battery storage if we are ultimately combined.'
And we're not gonna stop there, obviously. That was a low-hanging fruit.
But we fully expect there will be more efficiencies in terms of less natural gas needing to be built, less solar needing to be built, just because of the efficiency gains of being one territory working throughout our full 5,200 square miles in the Carolinas.
