South Carolina Regulators Grant Dominion Energy’s Request to Delay Rate Case Filing

The South Carolina Public Service Commission on April 28 approved Dominion Energy South Carolina Inc.’s request to delay a rate case filing that was previously scheduled for May 1 to pass on the savings from the company’s merger with South Carolina Electric & Gas Company to ratepayers.

Following the approval of Dominion Energy’s acquisition of South Carolina Electric & Gas. in December 2018, regulators asked the company to file the rate case, so as to transfer the benefits resulting from the merger to ratepayers in a timely basis.

In an April 1 filing, the Dominion Energy Inc. subsidiary asked the commission to issue an order extending the January 2021 deadline for new rates to take effect by sixty days until March 8, 2021, the date of its first billing cycle of March 2021.

The commission agreed that a delay is appropriate due to the issues presented by the COVID-19 situation and the declared state of emergency. Dominion will not be required to file its rate application before Aug. 15. The commission will revisit the procedural schedule in the upcoming weeks and consider the rate case in a separate docket.