There is a lot I don’t understand in the world, but how a state that is supposed to regulate a monopoly utility in the public interest would allow Georgia Power to build a $36 billion nuclear facility that is 10 times more expensive than equivalent generation, go $20 billion over budget, take 15 years to build, and still seen as an achievement is something I do not understand.
Of course, Plant Vogtle was completed—if there is no limit to what can be spent, as there wasn’t for this plant, then nearly anything can get built. But at what cost? The fact that the Georgia Public Service Commission (PSC) put in place no ratepayer protections from cost overruns and put the bulk of those overruns into the rate base, driving the largest rate increase in state history, is one of the biggest failures of the monopoly-regulatory compact that one could imagine.
The enormous costs for this project and the disappearance of ratepayers from the evaluation of its success are upsetting to me, but even more dismaying was learning about POWER’s Plant of the Year award for Plant Vogtle. Surely, POWER’s editors know that a $20 billion cost overrun is a substantial construction failure? In what scenario would anyone consider a contractor’s $100,000 estimate to build a house that actually cost $250,000 a success?
The reasons for Vogtle’s cost overruns are well-documented in PSC filings written by independent construction monitors with nuclear engineering and construction knowledge, and were widely reported in media. Reasons included poor decision-making, lax oversight, shoddy construction, and failure to create a real project schedule. COVID had less than a 1% impact on the budget.
Widely reported failures by executive and site management for Plant Vogtle seem to have been forgotten now that it’s done. But they have not been forgotten by the people of Georgia, whose bills containing Vogtle’s summer rates are just now hitting mailboxes. My first post-Vogtle electric bill shows an astonishing 35.8% increase (Figure 1).
One of the PSC’s mandates, as written in Georgia’s code, is to set just and reasonable rates. They did not do that. Far more affordable options for generating 2,200 MW of energy were dismissed throughout this project, even as PSC staff (Figure 3) and experts repeatedly called for the project to be cancelled to prevent further financial harm to ratepayers.
