Blue Ridge Electric adds 389 customers

The 389 customers that Blue Ridge Electric Cooperative added last year were the most since the Great Recession year of 2008.  And Blue Ridge’s Terry Ballenger told media representatives that the electric power retailer has detected an appreciable increase in new industry which is considered important to Blue Ridge because it helps stabilize retail charges.  Some of that new industry has committed to Oconee County—two of which are companies that will locate in the county’s Information and Technology Park on highway 11.  Perhaps the best development over the last year was the federal government’s decision last summer that eased the state’s requirement to reduce carbon emissions.  For a state that heavily relies on coal-fired power generation, new nuclear units were the saving grace, according to Ballenger.  The EPA allowed South Carolina to count those Fairfield County units as an offset.  Ballenger says that means some hefty retail rate increases that would have resulted are no longer in play.  He says those increases would have amounted to billions of dollars and, in Ballenger’s words, “would have been a killer” to customers pocketbooks and the state’s overall economy.