According to the publication Business North Carolina, a forthcoming report to South Carolina’s General Assembly on electricity market reforms will likely also affect policymakers in North Carolina, as it urges an attempt to create or join a multi-state grid operator “as quickly as possible.”
In 2020 South Carolina passed legislation that looked at the potential benefits of encouraging more competition in energy markets. The draft report, commissioned by South Carolina legislators following the passage of that bill, stresses that the effort should involve both North and South Carolina and claims it could save customers in South Carolina alone upwards of $362 million a year. North Carolina has almost double the number of residents as South Carolina.
The idea of joining a multi-state grid — specifically an RTO (regional transmission organization) — is the report’s top recommendation. RTOs are wholesalers of electricity for a region and handle the operations of a grid. There are only a few in the country and none in the Southeast.
Per the article, “the estimated $300 million in savings from an RTO would come from operational savings accruing when power flows ‘more freely across multiple utilities in the larger geographic region,’…and from investment-cost savings stemming from a reduction in “the total amount of necessary generation” projects.”
To read the full article in Business North Carolina, click here. To visit the South Carolina Legislature Electricity Market Reform Measures Study Committee page, click here.