Santee Cooper to buy from customers

MONCKS CORNER — State-owned utility Santee Cooper approved a plan Monday to buy excess power from customers who make their own electricity with solar panels and other generators.

"As a utility looking to the future and trying to be progressive, this is where we need to go," Santee Cooper Chief Executive Officer Lonnie Carter said.

The utility said it will buy power from customers on a trial basis this summer and decide in late September whether to offer the service permanently.

"The way they described it to me, it sounds like a good idea," said Dana Beach, executive director of the Coastal Conservation League, a Charleston-based environmental group.

Santee Cooper has not decided precisely how much it will pay for the electricity, but the prices will be below retail rates. Instead of cash, participating customers would be credited on a sliding scale based on the utility's system-wide demand at the time the extra electricity is fed onto the grid.

For instance, a homeowner generating solar power on a hot summer day would be credited more for that electricity than on a cooler fall day when the grid is not being sapped by tens of thousands of air conditioners.

The state's 24 electric cooperatives expect to have a similar program in place by the end of the summer, according to Ron Calcaterra, chief executive officer of the Central Electric Power Cooperative. Moncks Corner-based Santee Cooper and the cooperatives serve about 40 percent of the state.

The measure will offset costs for industrious conservationists like Stephen Morrison, a 35-year-old woodworker who spent $35,000 to wire his Mountain Rest home and studio to a set of solar panels. Currently, Morrison's average monthly power bill is about $60, though he is only credited at about a quarter or a third of the retail rate from his power company, the Blue Ridge Electric Cooperative.

"We're doing a certain amount of good, but by spreading the word and educating people about it, we're doing a lot more," Morrison said. "If somebody comes by my place, they're going to get a lesson in solar energy, whether it's the UPS man or a Jehovah's Witness."

Though 40 states have mandated similar programs, known as "net metering" or "net billing," Santee Cooper and South Carolina lawmakers have been slow to accommodate a growing wave of businesses and homeowners who want to wean themselves off of the grid, if not disconnect entirely.

At two public hearings on the issue in December, Santee Cooper executives and consultants pointed out that roughly a third of a power bill is attributed to the cost of power lines and customer service.

At a board meeting Monday, Santee Cooper Chairman O.L. Thompson argued that net billing would be costly to administer and would make it difficult for the utility to determine how much power it needs to generate in the future.

"It's going to be a mess," he said. "I love the concept, but I see a large number of difficulties."

The state Public Service Commission considered similar proposals at a hearing last week.

Although the PSC has not issued a decision, the state consumer advocate and a consultant for Scana Corp., Duke Energy Corp. and Progress Energy Inc. presented plans to accommodate homeowners and businesses that want to feed electricity into the grid.

Reach Kyle Stock at 937-5763 or kstock@postandcourier.com.