Duke Energy to spend $1.3bn burying South Carolina power lines
US utility Duke Energy plans to spend $1.3bn to bury 20% of South Carolina's electricity lines following the destruction caused by hurricanes Irma and Matthew. The decade-long project is part of a $3bn initiative to upgrade the state's grid that includes retrofitting transformers, installing smart meters and self-optimising 80% of the grid. The move follows a $13bn plan for North Carolina, which carries an estimated rate increase of $530m a year to 2026 to offset costs.
Ice storms and hurricanes have been duly noted by the power giant serving most of South Carolina, and it could mean rate hikes in the near future.

As a part of a wide-ranging plan to defend the state's power grid from falling limbs and other storm damage, Duke Energy announced Friday that it plans to bury a fifth of its lines over the next 10 years — at a cost of $1.3 billion.

"I would never use the words 'hurricane' and 'help' in the same sentence, but we have certainly learned with recent experience from Irma and Matthew," said Ryan Mosier, a Greenville-based Duke Energy spokesman. "They helped add more information to what we were already planning — areas where we need to look at things differently."

The line-burial announcement came Friday as part of a larger $3 billion Power/Forward Carolina initiative to make the state's grid "smarter, more reliable and more secure," the company said.

Along with a broad outline of its plans for the state, Duke released an independent economic impact analysis Friday that suggests Power/Forward Carolina would require rate increases of an additional $530 million a year by 2026 to offset costs.

That same analysis, conducted by University of South Carolina Moore School of Business research economist Joey Von Nessen, shows the state's businesses and households would realize a potential return on investment at least equal to rate increases, if not more, as Duke Energy's plan to invest billions of dollars — and hire thousands of people for the decade-long project — goes forward.

Von Nessen likened the Duke investment to that of multiple major auto announcements packed into one, pointing out that auto manufacturing investments in South Carolina have ranged recently from $500 million to $1.5 billion

"This is one of the largest capital investments we've seen in South Carolina in recent years," the research economist said. "This is a major stepping stone for new economic activity in the state, particularly when you look at its impact in rural areas."

Duke invests hundreds of millions of dollars in its grid infrastructure annually, but that maintains it, Mosier said.

"It doesn't advance it," he said. "We have a 20th Century grid that has served us well but is not equipped to deal with the challenges and customer demand going into the 21st Century."

Duke Energy has not yet sought approval for a rate increase in South Carolina, Mosier said, and would have to appear before the South Carolina Public Service Commission and hear input from customers before anything happens.

The South Carolina plan comes on the heels of a $13 billion plan for North Carolina, announced in April also under the umbrella of Power/Forward Carolina. In August, Duke Energy requested a rate increase from the North Carolina Utilities Commission of 16.7 percent for residential customers and 10.9 percent for commercial and industrial customers.

Rate increases in South Carolina would "partially offset" the plan's costs and could start with an additional $84 million to be collected starting in 2018, according to Van Nessen's analysis. Rates would need to gradually increase until leveling off at the end of 10 years and remain "relatively constant moving forward," meaning they would not be scaled back once the work is done.

Although when and how much rates might in fact rise remains uncertain — especially as state regulators grapple with rate increases attached to S.C. Electric and Gas Co.'s failed V.C. Summer nuclear plant expansion — hiring for the power-grid improvements has already begun, Mosier said.

"We are in extensive planning stages," Mosier said. "We are beginning initial hires in some categories of work. Not just Duke Energy jobs but associated support jobs, companies helping us with the work."

The goal is to "underground" 20 percent of the "least reliable vegetated overhead lines" on the grid, according to a statement from the company.

Mosier said line burials would happen "all over" and explained that Duke is running analyses to find spots around the state where outages have been frequent and longest in duration.

"We are planning to have an interactive tool that will be out on the website that customers can see what kind of work is going on in their backyard," Mosier said. "That will be out pretty soon."

Over the course of the project, Duke will employ an average of 3,300 additional people annually, with salaries and wages amounting to $315 million in peak years of the project. Additional line workers and engineers will be among the jobs critical to carrying out the plan, according to Von Nessen's 31-page study.

The biggest beneficiaries will be Oconee and York counties, where Duke operates nuclear power plants and already has the state's largest numbers of Duke workers.

More than 3,200 Duke employees work in Oconee County today, and the company plans to add 1,352 workers there by 2025. Similarly about 3,000 Duke employees work in York, and Duke plans to add nearly 1,200 jobs there. Greenville also stands to benefit: its current Duke workforce of 1,766 stands to grow by 585. In Anderson, where Duke has 469 workers, 163 jobs will be added.

Because the Oconee County population cannot support such an increase in highly skilled technical positions, Nessen said, the company plans to focus on energy career awareness, strategic partnerships and education pathways for careers in energy.

In addition to burying lines, the Power/Forward plan includes:

$704 million to retrofit 49,000 transformers, replace 2,300 miles of deteriorating cable and to enhance physical and cyber security throughout the system.

$533 million to improve substations and transmission lines, mitigate flooding and add system intelligence

$385 million to "self-optimize" 80 percent of the state's the grid for efficient energy delivery and reliability; this would include the ability to isolate problem areas automatically and reroute power around them

$107 million to install smart meters

$74 million to upgrade the company's communications network to 4G LTE

Duke Energy serves 740,000 customers in 30 of South Carolina's 46 counties through its companies Duke Energy Carolinas and Duke Energy Progress and has employees in 42 counties.

Headquartered in Charlotte, N.C., Duke Energy is an S&P 100 Stock Index company traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol DUK. More information about the company is available at duke-energy.com.

Anna B. Mitchell covers business across the Upstate. Follow her on Facebook or on Twitter @AnnaBard2U.