Owners of the failed San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) agreed to slice hundreds of millions of dollars from the cost to ratepayers of a 2012 breakdown, and the California Public Utilities Commission has unanimously approved the revised settlement agreement.
The new deal cuts $775 million from customer’s share of the $4.7 billion in closure costs and halts all customer payments after December 2017 for the failed power plant.
If accepted by all parties, the agreement would save around 6 million homes about $120 over four years. Some ratepayers could possibly see a rebate or a credit on their bills. Those refunds will only be for closure costs they’ve paid since December 2017, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune.
“At our voting meeting today, we approved a modified 2018 settlement agreement that should resolve the investigation into the closure of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) and save consumers roughly $750 million,” the CPUC announced on Twitter on Thursday.
In 2012, a radiation leak shut down the nuclear power plant located just north of Oceanside. Southern California Edison Company (SCE) and San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E) took one of the units offline because of a failure of replacement steam generators manufactured by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries that were installed in 2011.
A previous agreement approved by regulators in 2014 left ratepayers on the hook for a bigger portion of the expenses. Consumer protection groups complained they were shut out of the discussions. In 2015, it was discovered the framework for the deal had been outlined in a 2013 meeting in Warsaw, Poland.
State regulators then permitted Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric to start charging consumers billions of dollars for the failure of the San Onofre nuclear plant.
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The settling parties have 10 days to accept or reject the modification.
According to the proposed ruling document, there was no opposition filed on the settlement by any involved parties.
Several customer advocacy groups urged the Commission to adopt the 2018 document saying it was “very much in the public interest and provides meaningful rate relief to customers.”
