Duke Energy Dispute Goes to Florida Supreme Court 

A dispute about whether Duke Energy Florida customers should be required to pay $7.2 million related to an outage at a power plant has gone to the state Supreme Court.

The Office of Public Counsel, a state agency that represents consumers in utility issues, filed a notice Friday that it is a first step in challenging a decision by the Florida Public Service Commission in the dispute.

As is common, the notice did not detail arguments that the Office of Public Counsel will make at the Supreme Court.

The case involves an outage last year at Duke’s Crystal River Unit 4, a coal-fired plant in Citrus County, according to an order issued last month by the Public Service Commission.

Duke sought to collect $14.4 million from customers in what are known as “replacement power” costs. But the Office of Public Counsel and representatives of business customers objected, arguing that Duke had mishandled the situation. The Public Service Commission decided that Duke should be responsible for half of the costs, with the other half paid by customers.

Article reposted with permission from the News Service of Florida.