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Updated: January 3, 2026 @ 8:36 am
Syndicated and guest columns represent the personal views of the writers, not necessarily those of the editorial staff. The editorial department operates entirely independently of the news department and is not involved in newsroom operations.
Tom Ervin
Tom Ervin
As a former member of the South Carolina Public Service Commission, I can’t count the number of times Duke and Dominion officials told us that solar power won’t work on a large scale because “the sun doesn’t always shine.” Well Duke Florida has finally proved itself wrong in a big way. How big? $1 billion big.
That’s how much Florida ratepayers will save, according to Duke Florida’s analysis.
Florida’s Duke customers are expected to save about $44 per household. This in a time most electric utilities are planning to spend billions of dollars on new gas-fired power generation plants. That should be welcome news for electricity ratepayers everywhere — if only their investor-owned utilities would follow Duke Florida’s example.
So where do the billion-dollar savings come from? About $750 million will be saved by avoiding fuel costs. Another thing I learned by serving on the PSC is that natural gas prices are subject to fluctuations in the market. And once gas prices go up, those increased costs are passed on to consumers. Since solar power relies on the sun, its price never goes up.
But the news gets even better. Duke Florida anticipates saving another $350 million by upgrading existing power plants, which is less expensive than building new ones. Santee Cooper and Dominion Energy South Carolina have announced that their new gas-fired turbine for the proposed Canadys plant already has doubled in price. My prediction is that’s just the beginning. Utility companies around the world are all competing to buy new gas turbines, with the wait time from purchase to delivery already more than five years.
Meanwhile, solar panels have become more efficient and are currently cheaper than any alternative. That’s why Duke Florida owns, operates and maintains a portfolio of more than 25 solar sites across the state.
Duke Florida has wisely chosen to build eight more solar projects scheduled to be completed by 2027. Four of the 74.9-megawatt solar sites will generate enough electricity to power the equivalent of 23,000 homes. Duke says they will effectively displace 1.2 million cubic feet of natural gas, 15,000 barrels of fuel oil and 12,000 tons of coal each year. 
Duke Energy Florida is also evaluating green hydrogen as a way to amplify its solar power plants. Unlike fossil fuels, hydrogen emits no greenhouse gases when burned. It’s a clean energy source capable of long-duration storage, which also provides grid reliability.
The vice president of generation and transmission strategy for Duke Florida believes that hydrogen has great potential since it’s not weather dependent. It can also be turned on or off at any time, which makes it readily dispatchable. Duke Energy Florida recently reported a successful test of its green hydrogen production, storage and combustion at its DeBary facility.
So can we use these lessons learned in South Carolina, where new electric generation is needed to meet the needs of a growing population? Well, it’s never too late. I’ve been constantly asking my friends in the General Assembly to slow down and consider how we can reduce the increasing electricity costs for our residents, small businesses and our large manufacturing sector.
Time is of the essence. Things are getting more complicated by the day as we see all these new data centers wanting to come to our state and bring with them an outsized appetite for more electricity. Those data centers don’t bring many new jobs, but they will raise electric power prices for the rest of us unless the General Assembly decides to make them pay their fair share of the enormous costs for new power plants.
Tom Ervin is a Greenville attorney and former Circuit Court judge who resigned last year from the S.C. Public Service Commission.
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