North Carolina denies Duke a 255 MW turbine over data-centre forecasts

Serguey Asael Shinder23 September 2026, 08:142 min read

The North Carolina Utilities Commission has refused Duke Energy permission to build and run a 255 MW simple-cycle natural gas combustion turbine at the Smith Energy Complex in Richmond County. Utility Dive reported the decision, dated 18 September 2026.

Two grounds are given: uncertainty about load growth, and cost. Commission staff testimony described the $584 million price as "staggering" and "very expensive", and the commission questioned both the need for the plant and what ratepayers would get from it.

The sentence that carries the decision concerns whose demand this is. Duke's modelling does project significant load growth, but as the order puts it, "much of the growth appears to be based upon anticipated data center customer additions" — and "any such anticipated load growth is insufficiently reliable for the Commission to act at this point."

Duke told Utility Dive it is "disappointed", is reviewing the order and assessing next steps, and maintains the turbine is part of a least-cost path to reliable and affordable service as demand grows across the state. In February the company had told investors its $103 billion capital plan was the largest on file at any regulated US utility, positioned for the data centre boom. The order also referenced Duke's commitment to the White House Ratepayer Protection Pledge, a voluntary undertaking by utilities and hyperscalers not to shift data centre costs onto other customers.

What it means

The finding is not that the load will not come. It is that an anticipated customer is not a customer, and that the difference matters when the asset lasts thirty years and the ratepayer carries it.

That distinction has been the quiet assumption under a great deal of recent utility capital planning. A pipeline of data centre enquiries is real information, but enquiries are not contracts, and a developer shopping the same project across three states appears in three forecasts. A commission that treats projected hyperscaler demand as speculative until it is contractually firm has shifted the risk of the forecast back toward the party making it.

Watch what Duke does next rather than what it said. The available moves — a refiled application with firm commitments attached, a different resource, or an appeal — are informative about whether the underlying demand is contractible or only anticipated.