The Kansas Corporation Commission just opened a new rate case for Westar Energy. They're asking for a $152 million increase, citing infrastructure upgrades and the need to recover costs from their Wolf Creek nuclear plant investment. Has anyone dealt with similar nuclear cost recovery cases? The proposed residential rate would jump from $0.1089/kWh to $0.1247/kWh on Schedule R-1. That's going to hit my commercial clients hard here in Topeka.
Westar Energy rate case - anyone following KCC Docket 15-WSEE-115-RTS?
We've been tracking similar cases down here in Texas with CPS Energy. Nuclear cost recovery is always a hot button issue. The key is challenging the prudency of the investments and making sure they're not gold-plating the system. Have they filed their direct testimony yet? You'll want to pay close attention to their capacity factor assumptions for Wolf Creek.
Direct testimony was filed last week. They're claiming a 92% capacity factor which seems optimistic given Wolf Creek's historical performance. I pulled five years of EIA data and they've averaged closer to 87%. That 5% difference could mean millions in disallowed costs. Angela, did CPS try similar inflated projections in their case?
Floyd's right to be skeptical. Duke Energy tried the same trick in North Carolina with their McGuire units. The NCUC knocked their capacity factor down from 95% to 89% in the final order, saving ratepayers about $80 million over the rate period. The commission said utilities can't assume best-case scenarios for ratemaking purposes.
Exactly, Derek. CPS initially claimed 94% but we got them down to 88% after showing their actual O&M outage history. The trick is getting good discovery on their outage schedules and maintenance planning. Floyd, have you requested their 10-year maintenance forecast yet?
Just filed that discovery request yesterday along with interrogatories on their fuel cost projections. They're also asking to recover $45 million for transmission upgrades that seem questionable. Some of these projects appear to be reliability-driven rather than growth-related, which should be treated differently for cost recovery purposes.
Transmission cost allocation is tricky business. AEP tried something similar in Ohio - they wanted to socialize the costs of upgrades that primarily benefited industrial customers in specific zones. The PUCO made them allocate those costs more fairly based on actual beneficiaries. Might be worth looking at whether Westar's upgrades follow similar patterns.
Great point, Jim. I'm going to dig into their transmission planning documents to see if these upgrades are really system-wide benefits or just serving specific load pockets. The evidentiary hearing is set for June, so I've got time to build a solid case. Thanks everyone for the insights - this forum is invaluable for sharing strategies across different jurisdictions.