Cheaper and Cleaner Electricity Key to New Business Forecast
Facts ARE Facts
Lower costs. Cleaner electricity.
Santee Cooper’s new business forecast is that simple. Over the next decade, we’ll be closing older, inefficient coal units; adding cheaper, greener solar power, battery storage, and energy efficiency; and shoring up reliability with cleaner natural gas generation as needed.
That’s just one way we’ll be cutting costs and using savings to pay off our debt faster and at a lower cost to customers. We’re also taking steps that will allow us to freeze power prices for the next five years, at least.
Here are some highlights from the new generating resource plan:
- Increase our solar power by nearly 500% - that means adding 1,000 megawatts (MW) of solar power by 2024
- Add 200 MW of battery storage, the largest announced commitment to this technology in South Carolina by far
- Close a coal-fired generating station, Winyah Station, by 2027 in a manner intended to avoid the need for layoffs
- Reduce Santee Cooper’s carbon emissions by about 30% over the next decade
- Save $90 million to $170 million per year
With a new, experienced leadership team, a new approach and new strategies, we are doing exactly what customers and other stakeholders expect, to improve the value of South Carolina’s biggest and most important asset. It won’t happen overnight. It will take time. It will take patience. But there is incredible value and opportunity associated with the future of Santee Cooper, and our Board and leadership are committed to taking the necessary steps to get there as part of their fiduciary responsibility to make the utility the best it can be.
There is a new future at Santee Cooper. And that is a FACT.
