Ratepayers may owe a debt of gratitude to critics of SC Electric & Gas. 
Internal documents obtained by Friends of the Earth and the Sierra Club revealed that SCE&G wanted to increase rates another 16% to 34% to pay for its failing nuclear project. 
Ratepayers would have had to pay more than $50 a month – $600 a year.
“The planned massive rate hikes may have been deemed by SCE&G to be unsustainable, adding to the reasons that the bungled project was terminated,” Tom Clements of Friends of the Earth said.
If the nuclear project had continued through 2019, the documents revealed that SCE&G intended to ask for another 16% on top of the 18% ratepayers pay.
If approved by the Public Service Commission, 3 more rate hikes from 2017-2019 – just for project financing costs – would have resulted in “a stunning and untenable 34% pay-in-advance nuclear charge” on SCE&G bills, he said.
 “The unjust nuclear charge would have been much higher if the project had dragged on to a later termination date,” he said.
 “I think that customer anger would have been much greater than now and the financial health of the company much weaker.
SCE&G continues to refuse to release the critical Bechtel analysis and associated documents that led to SCE&G’s partner, Santee Cooper, announcing it was abandoning the project.
SCE&G soon followed.
 A November 2016 document shows that SCE&G had planned to ask for almost 7% more in 2017.
The document further reveals that in 2018 and 2019 SCE&G had planned annual rate hikes of 5.2% and 3.7%, both much larger than any earlier request.
SCE&G planned the rate hikes under the controversial Base Load Review Act that lawmakers now say the company led them to believe would save ratepayers money and bring them lower electric rates.