NextEra Energy is seeking to acquire Dominion Energy, which could bring South Carolina customers under the umbrella of one of the largest power companies in the United States.
The combined company would become the world’s largest regulated electric utility with about 10 million customers and 110 gigawatts worth of power on its system, executives said in a joint statement. And they have another 130 gigawatts worth of demand from large energy users in their pipeline.
“Electricity demand is rising faster than it has in decades,” NextEra CEO John Ketchum said in a statement. “Projects are getting larger and more complex. Customers need affordable and reliable power now, not years from now. We are bringing NextEra Energy and Dominion Energy together because scale matters more than ever— not for the sake of size, but because scale translates into capital and operating efficiencies.”
Florida-based NextEra, which has market value of about $194 billion, is proposing a stock swap — eight-tenths of a share of its stock for each outstanding share of Dominion — so NextEra shareholders would own about 75% of the combined company.
The agreement with Dominion will need approval from federal regulators, as well as state regulators in Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina.
NextEra began as Florida Power & Light, a regional utility in south Florida. The company now has subsidiaries that include solar and wind power farms in the West and nuclear power plants in Wisconsin, New Hampshire and Florida.
The company has sought for years to expand by acquiring other utilities, though with little success. Deals to purchase Hawaiian Electric, Texas-based Oncor and Duke Energy all fell through, as did NextEra’s bid to buy South Carolina’s state-owned utility Santee Cooper in the wake of the failed V.C. Summer nuclear expansion.
The deal means NextEra would provide power across four of the fastest-growing states in the country.
Dominion will maintain its Virginia headquarters, as well as its South Carolina offices, and customers across Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina would ?see a total $2.25 billion in discounts on their monthly bills over two years, according to a joint statement by the companies.
What the deal might mean for utility projects underway in the Palmetto State remains to be seen, especially as Dominion and Santee Cooper recently secured regulatory approval for a jointly built natural gas plant on the site of a former Lowcountry coal plant.
And while Dominion owns and operates V.C. Summer’s original nuclear reactor, it has stayed out of efforts by Santee Cooper to sell off a pair of partially-built reactors at the Fairfield County site. That could change under NextEra.
In its home state of Virginia, Dominion already serves one of the largest cluster of data centers in the world.
NextEra has been pushing into the space as utilities struggle to supply the electricity necessary for the energy-hungry centers that are powering the growth of artificial intelligence.
NextEra last year struck deals with Google in Iowa and Meta in the Southwest.
In Iowa, it plans to restart the 615-megawatt Duane Arnold Energy Center nuclear facility.
Dominion expanded to South Carolina in 2019 after SCANA, parent company of South Carolina Electric & Gas, abandoned the V.C. Summer expansion and spiraled into bankruptcy. Dominion Energy bought what was the only Fortune 500 company based in South Carolina.
As part of that buyout deal — approved by utility regulators at the end of 2018 — Dominion agreed to knock down what customers would ultimately have to pay for SCANA’s share of the $9 billion nuclear debt.
The boondoggle accounts for 5.6% of Dominion South Carolina customer’s monthly electricity bill. That amounts to just over $8 a month for the average residential customer, which is scheduled to continue for about 13 more years.
This story was originally produced by SC Daily Gazette, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network which includes NC Newsline, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.
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