South Carolina § 58-31-227 - Renewable energy facilities and resources.

§ 58-31-227. Renewable energy facilities and resources.

(A) The Public Service Authority shall file for commission approval of a program for the competitive procurement of energy, capacity, and environmental attributes from renewable energy facilities to meet needs for new generation resources identified by the Authority in its Integrated Resource Plans or other planning processes. The commission may not grant approval unless the commission finds and determines that the Public Service Authority satisfied all requirements of this section and the proposed program is in the best interests of the customers of the Public Service Authority. The commission may adopt procedures to implement the requirements of this section and shall retain continuing oversight and approval authority over all aspects of an approved program to ensure any approved program complies with this section and is in the best interests of the customers of the Public Service Authority.

(B) The Public Service Authority shall procure renewable energy resources subject to the following requirements:

(1) Renewable energy resources procured by the Public Service Authority shall be procured via a competitive solicitation process open to all independent market participants that meet minimum eligibility requirements.

(2) The Public Service Authority shall issue public notification of its intention to issue a competitive renewable solicitation at least ninety days prior to the release of each solicitation, including the proposed procurement volume, process, and timeline.

(3) Renewable energy facilities eligible to participate in a competitive procurement are those that have a valid interconnection request on file and that use renewable energy resources identified in Section 58-39-120(F) and may include battery storage devices charged exclusively by renewable energy.

(C) The Public Service Authority shall make publicly available at least forty-five days prior to each competitive solicitation:

(1) A pro forma contract to inform market participants of the procurement terms and conditions. The pro forma contract will (i) include standardized and commercially reasonable requirements for contract performance security consistent with market standards; (ii) define limits and compensation for resource dispatch and curtailments that limit uncompensated curtailment to a specified portion of estimated annual output.

(2) A bid evaluation methodology that ensures all bids are treated equitably, including price and nonprice evaluation criteria. Nonprice criteria will at minimum include consideration of diversity in resource size and geographic location.

(3) Interconnection requirements and study methodology, including how bids without existing interconnection studies will be treated for purposes of evaluation.

(D) After bids are submitted and evaluated, winning bids will be selected based upon the published evaluation methodology.

(E) The Public Service Authority shall issue a public report summarizing the results of each competitive solicitation within sixty days of the award notifications. The report will include, at minimum, a summary of the submitted bids and an anonymized list of the project awards, including their size, location, average award price and tenor, and award price range.

HISTORY: 2021 Act No. 90 (H.3194), SECTION 22, eff January 1, 2022.