North Carolina’s Utilities Commission has turned down a $584 million natural gas turbine that Duke Energy wanted to build in Richmond County, and the reason was not the price alone. The panel concluded that the data center demand Duke used to justify the project was too uncertain to support a certificate, calling the projected load growth “insufficiently reliable for the Commission to act at this point.” Duke, the state’s largest utility, now has to decide whether to fight the ruling or rebuild its case.
The denial is unusual in a state where such certificates have long been treated as routine, and it lands while utilities across the country are racing to line up power for computing campuses that have not yet been built. Duke can come back, but the order sets conditions it will have to meet first, and the commission signaled it wants scrutiny of the demand forecast before any new steel goes in the ground.
What Duke asked for and what the commission decided
Duke Energy Progress applied to build a 255-megawatt combustion turbine at its Smith Energy Complex in Richmond County, near the South Carolina line, with an in-service target of January 1, 2030, according to Utility Dive’s account of the order. The commission’s order is dated September 18, though several outlets reported it on September 21. The cost was put at $584 million, a figure the commission itself described as “staggering” and “very expensive.”
Three Republican-appointed commissioners, Bill Brawley, Tommy Tucker and Donald van der Vaart, voted to deny the certificate, according to WUNC’s reporting. Democrat Floyd McKissick voted to grant it, and a fifth commissioner, John Gadja, did not vote. Tucker and van der Vaart also filed concurring opinions. The denial was without prejudice, meaning Duke is free to file again, as Canary Media reported.
Duke said it was disappointed and is reviewing the order. Its position, as WUNC quoted the company, is that it has demonstrated the Smith CT “is part of a least-cost path to maintain reliable and affordable service.” The company also said it was assessing potential next steps, which leaves open whether it will appeal, amend the application or wait for the resource-plan decision.
Data center load forecasts that did not hold up
Duke’s own modeling showed significant growth in demand, and the commission noted that much of it appeared to rest on anticipated data center customer additions rather than signed load. The order found that Duke had not shown how much of the plant’s output would actually serve data centers, or how those customers would pay for it. Tucker wrote that Duke should provide “additional evidence regarding the extent to which the Proposed Facility is needed to provide service to data centers,” and pointed out that the turbine would sit in the same county as a transmission project the commission had already approved for a new data center campus.
Van der Vaart, in his concurrence, addressed Duke’s argument that the turbine was the only resource that could be finished in time. “An assertion that the Proposed Facility is the only resource that can be completed in time does not by itself substitute for that analysis,” he wrote, referring to the comparison of alternatives that state law requires.
The commission also said Duke had not shown that options such as grid modernization, energy storage and efficiency would cost more than a new turbine. Its order called the application premature and the record insufficient to judge whether statutory requirements were met, a finding that hands the company a to-do list rather than a permanent no.
The ratepayer pledge and the path to a refiling
A separate thread in the order concerns a commitment Duke made earlier this year. The company signed the White House Ratepayer Protection Pledge, and the commission wrote that if Duke seeks a certificate for generation added because of forecasted data center load, Duke “needs to demonstrate how the addition of such new generating capacity and its costs will be consistent with” that pledge, according to a summary from the NC Data Centers newsletter. The order added that the pledge “is not a substitute for the statutory CPCN standard,” the certificate of public convenience and necessity that utilities must obtain before building.
Canary Media reported that any refiling must wait for the commission’s ruling on Duke’s latest long-range resource plan, expected before the end of the year, and must show compliance with the pledge. In other words, the commission is asking Duke to win the planning case before it asks for a permit for a single plant.
Will Scott of the Environmental Defense Fund told WUNC that “unprecedented wouldn’t be too strong a word to use here,” adding that such certificates “have generally been sort of a formality.” Duke had not said, in the coverage reviewed, whether it would refile or appeal.
The commission’s docket is public on the North Carolina Utilities Commission’s filing system, and the open question is whether the resource-plan ruling due by year-end will give Duke the verified data center load it lacked in September.
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.
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