- Filing to include smart investments in innovative
technologies to increase efficiency, reduce outages, while
generating customer savings
- Building 14 new solar sites, adding 1,050 megawatts of clean
energy
- Expiring fuel and storm recovery costs lower overall
customer bills in 2025
ST.
PETERSBURG, Fla., Jan. 31,
2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, Duke Energy Florida
notified the Florida Public Service Commission (FPSC) of its intent
to file a rate case in April that proposes investments to increase
generation unit efficiency, reduce outages and expand solar
generation as part of increased base rates taking effect in January
2025.
The company is requesting an average annual base rate increase
of approximately 4% during 2025 through 2027.
Even with the requested base rate increase, the company expects
overall customer bills to decrease in 2025. The 2022 fuel
under-recovery, storm restoration cost recovery and legacy
purchased power contracts will expire year-end 2024, which will
lower overall bills in 2025.
The rate request delivers the smarter energy future customers
deserve while providing price stability and certainty. The proposed
investments will decrease outages and shorten restoration
times for customers and communities, while reducing emissions
at a reasonable cost.
As the energy industry continues to evolve, Duke Energy Florida
must anticipate changes driven by population growth, technological
advancements and customer expectations.
"This proposal offers what our customers want – a more reliable
energy system using cleaner energy," said Melissa Seixas, Duke Energy Florida state
president. "We are focused on making smart energy investments that
leverage innovative technology to increase power plant efficiency
and reduce outages."
Investments
Investments under the proposed 2025-2027 rate case filing
include:
- Continued grid modernization to serve increased population
growth through improved reliability, resulting in fewer outages and
shorter restoration times.
- Between 2018 and 2023, the company reduced the average length
of a customer outage by 27%. In 2023, the company had its best
reliability performance in more than a decade.
- Customers are already benefiting from our self-healing
technology through our Storm Protection Program. This technology
reroutes power and reduces the number of customers who experience
outages. For example, during hurricanes Ian, Nicole
and Idalia, self-healing grid technologies helped to
automatically restore service to more than 230,000 customers who
experienced outages and saved more than 200 million minutes of
total lost outage time.
- Continued enhancements to power plants to reduce fuel
consumption, generating future customer savings.
- Duke Energy Florida estimates customers will save $150 million to $200
million per year in reduced fuel costs from investments
under the proposed 2025-2027 rate case filing.
- Building 14 new solar plants between 2025 and 2027, adding
another 1,050 megawatts (MW) of clean energy to Florida's grid. These cost-effective solar
investments will reduce Florida's
dependence on fossil fuels, increase fuel generation diversity and
reduce emissions.
- Additionally, the continued exploration of innovative clean
energy technologies, such as long-duration energy storage and
the DeBary Hydrogen project, a clean energy hydrogen
production and storage system. These projects maximize
customer benefits through state-of-the-art technology solutions
that offset traditional utility investments, improve the resilience
of utility facilities and enable Florida's transition to cleaner energy.
Next Steps
The proposed 2025-2027 rate case filing is subject to the FPSC
approval. The approval process includes public hearings to
allow customers feedback on the rate requests and the utility
service quality. The FPSC considers customer input when reviewing
rate increase requests.
Through a public and transparent process, the schedule of public
hearings will be announced through the FPSC's website and customer
bill inserts. Timing is expected for midyear.
Connecting Customers with Billing Assistance
Duke Energy Florida will also continue to offer programs and
assistance options to low-income customers. This includes
connecting customers with assistance agencies that administer the
Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program and Elderly Home Energy
Assistance Program.
Through the Duke Energy Foundation, the company also manages and
contributes to its Share the Light Fund®, which assists
customers with paying their energy bills. In 2023, we distributed
more than $1 million in energy bill
assistance to qualifying Florida
customers.
Duke Energy Florida
Duke Energy Florida, a subsidiary of Duke Energy, owns 10,500
megawatts of energy capacity, supplying electricity to 1.9 million
residential, commercial and industrial customers across a
13,000-square-mile service area in Florida.
Duke Energy (NYSE: DUK), a Fortune 150 company headquartered in
Charlotte, N.C., is one of
America's largest energy holding companies. Its electric utilities
serve 8.2 million customers in North
Carolina, South Carolina,
Florida, Indiana, Ohio
and Kentucky, and collectively own
50,000 megawatts of energy capacity. Its natural gas unit serves
1.6 million customers in North
Carolina, South Carolina,
Tennessee, Ohio and Kentucky. The company employs 27,600
people.
Duke Energy is executing an aggressive clean energy transition
to achieve its goals of net-zero methane emissions from its natural
gas business by 2030 and net-zero carbon emissions from electricity
generation by 2050. The company has interim carbon emission targets
of at least 50% reduction from electric generation by 2030, 50% for
Scope 2 and certain Scope 3 upstream and downstream emissions by
2035, and 80% from electric generation by 2040. In addition, the
company is investing in major electric grid enhancements and energy
storage, and exploring zero-emission power generation technologies
such as hydrogen and advanced nuclear.
Duke Energy was named to Fortune's 2023 "World's Most Admired
Companies" list and Forbes' "World's Best Employers" list. More
information is available at duke-energy.com. The Duke
Energy News Center contains news releases, fact sheets, photos
and videos. Duke Energy's illumination features stories
about people, innovations, community topics and environmental
issues. Follow Duke Energy
on Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook.
Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward-Looking
Statements
This document includes forward-looking statements within the
meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and
Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934.
Forward-looking statements are based on Duke Energy Florida, LLC's,
Duke Energy Corporation's and its subsidiaries (collectively, the
"Company") beliefs and assumptions and can often be identified by
terms and phrases that include "anticipate," "believe," "intend,"
"estimate," "expect," "continue," "should," "could," "may," "plan,"
"project," "predict," "will," "potential," "forecast," "target,"
"guidance," "outlook" or other similar terminology. Various factors
may cause actual results to be materially different than the
suggested outcomes within forward-looking statements; accordingly,
there is no assurance that such results will be realized. These
factors include, but are not limited to:
- The ability to implement our business strategy, including our
carbon emission reduction goals;
- State, federal, and foreign legislative and regulatory
initiatives, including costs of compliance with existing and future
environmental requirements, including those related to climate
change, as well as rulings that affect cost and investment recovery
or have an impact on rate structures or market prices;
- The extent and timing of costs and liabilities to comply with
federal and state laws, regulations and legal requirements related
to coal ash remediation, including amounts for required closure of
certain ash impoundments, are uncertain and difficult to
estimate;
- The ability to recover eligible costs, including amounts
associated with coal ash impoundment retirement obligations, asset
retirement and construction costs related to carbon emissions
reductions, and costs related to significant weather events, and to
earn an adequate return on investment through rate case proceedings
and the regulatory process;
- The costs of decommissioning nuclear facilities could prove to
be more extensive than amounts estimated and all costs may not be
fully recoverable through the regulatory process;
- The impact of extraordinary external events, such as the
pandemic health event resulting from COVID-19, and their collateral
consequences, including the disruption of global supply chains or
the economic activity in our service territories;
- Costs and effects of legal and administrative proceedings,
settlements, investigations, and claims;
- Industrial, commercial, and residential growth or decline in
service territories or customer bases resulting from sustained
downturns of the economy, reduced customer usage due to cost
pressures from inflation or fuel costs, and the economic health of
our service territories or variations in customer usage patterns,
including energy efficiency efforts, natural gas building and
appliance electrification, and use of alternative energy sources,
such as self-generation and distributed generation
technologies;
- Federal and state regulations, laws and other efforts designed
to promote and expand the use of energy efficiency measures,
natural gas electrification, and distributed generation
technologies, such as private solar and battery storage, in Duke
Energy service territories could result in a reduced number of
customers, excess generation resources, as well as stranded
costs;
- Advancements in technology;
- Additional competition in electric and natural gas markets and
continued industry consolidation;
- The influence of weather and other natural phenomena on
operations, including the economic, operational and other effects
of severe storms, hurricanes, droughts, earthquakes, and tornadoes,
including extreme weather associated with climate change;
- Changing investor, customer and other stakeholder expectations
and demands, including heightened emphasis on environmental,
social, and governance concerns and costs related thereto;
- The ability to successfully operate electric generating
facilities and deliver electricity to customers, including direct
or indirect effects to the Company resulting from an incident that
affects the United States electric
grid or generating resources;
- Operational interruptions to our natural gas distribution and
transmission activities;
- The availability of adequate interstate pipeline transportation
capacity and natural gas supply;
- The impact on facilities and business from a terrorist or other
attack, war, vandalism, cybersecurity threats, data security
breaches, operational events, information technology failures, or
other catastrophic events, such as fires, explosions, pandemic
health events, or other similar occurrences;
- The inherent risks associated with the operation of nuclear
facilities, including environmental, health, safety, regulatory and
financial risks, including the financial stability of third-party
service providers;
- The timing and extent of changes in commodity prices and
interest rates and the ability to recover such costs through the
regulatory process, where appropriate, and their impact on
liquidity positions and the value of underlying assets;
- The results of financing efforts, including the ability to
obtain financing on favorable terms, which can be affected by
various factors, including credit ratings, interest rate
fluctuations, compliance with debt covenants and conditions, an
individual utility's generation mix, and general market and
economic conditions;
- Credit ratings of the Company and its subsidiaries may be
different from what is expected;
- Declines in the market prices of equity and fixed-income
securities and resultant cash funding requirements for defined
benefit pension plans, other post-retirement benefit plans and
nuclear decommissioning trust funds;
- Construction and development risks associated with the
completion of the Company's and its subsidiaries' capital
investment projects, including risks related to financing, timing
and receipt of necessary regulatory approvals, obtaining and
complying with terms of permits, meeting construction budgets and
schedules, and satisfying operating and environmental performance
standards, as well as the ability to recover costs from customers
in a timely manner, or at all;
- Changes in rules for regional transmission organizations,
including changes in rate designs and new and evolving capacity
markets, and risks related to obligations created by the default of
other participants;
- The ability to control operation and maintenance costs;
- The level of creditworthiness of counterparties to
transactions;
- The ability to obtain adequate insurance at acceptable
costs;
- Employee workforce factors, including the potential inability
to attract and retain key personnel;
- The ability of subsidiaries to pay dividends or distributions
to Duke Energy Corporation holding company (the Parent);
- The performance of projects undertaken by our businesses and
the success of efforts to invest in and develop new
opportunities;
- The effect of accounting and reporting pronouncements issued
periodically by accounting standard-setting bodies and the
SEC;
- The impact of United States
tax legislation to our financial condition, results of operations
or cash flows and our credit ratings;
- The impacts from potential impairments of goodwill or equity
method investment carrying values;
- Asset or business acquisitions and dispositions, may not yield
the anticipated benefits;
- The actions of activist shareholders could disrupt our
operations, impact our ability to execute on our business strategy,
or cause fluctuations in the trading price of our common stock;
and
Additional risks and uncertainties are identified and discussed
in the Company's reports filed with the SEC and available at the
SEC's website at www.sec.gov. In light of these risks,
uncertainties and assumptions, the events described in the
forward-looking statements might not occur or might occur to a
different extent or at a different time than described.
Forward-looking statements speak only as of the date they are made
and Duke Energy expressly disclaims an obligation to publicly
update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a
result of new information, future events, or otherwise.
Media contact: Ana Gibbs
Media line: 800.559.3853
View original content to download
multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/duke-energy-florida-to-file-for-new-base-rates-expects-lower-overall-customer-bills-in-2025-302049466.html
SOURCE Duke Energy