Westminster’s power supplier to vote on proposed rate hike

At a meeting one week from today, the board for Piedmont Municipal Power Agency will vote on whether to raise its wholesale rates to its member cities which include Westminster. The city of Westminster is represented by on the PMPA board by city administrator Jeff Lord and by Councilman Jimmy Powell, who serves as an alternate, and is entitled to one vote. Coleman Smoak, executive director for PMPA, declined to disclose the size of the rate increase, but he said it is needed to help meet the increasing cost of the agency’s supply of electric power. That power is generated by one of the nuclear reactors at Duke Energy’s Catawba plant. PMPA owns a quarter of one of the Catawba reactors. The PMPA board meets February 19 at its headquarters in Greer, and Smoak says there will be an announcement on the vote afterward. Besides Westminster, nine other cities makeup the consortium: Easley, Greer, Gaffney, Rock Hill, Union, Laurens, Clinton, Newberry, and Abbeville.