Thanks in large part to SCE&G customers’ justified objections, the S.C. Public Service Commission has significantly reduced the boost in electric rates sought by the utility. Cynics who doubt the public’s positive capacity to make its voice heard, take note.

SCE&G’s customers can’t choose to do without electricity, or buy it from another source. That’s why SCE&G, like other power companies in this state, must obtain permission from the S.C. Public Service Commission to raise its rates. And in a series of open hearings across the state, ordinary people raised quite a ruckus about the extraordinary scale of SCE&G’s initial proposal for a rate hike of 9.52 percent starting this month.

The utility, owned by Columbia-based SCANA, argued that pressing financial obligations, including approximately $700 million in federally mandated improvements to coal-fired plants, required the steep hike. And just as regulatory agencies have a duty to protect the public from excessive electricity rates, they have a duty to grant utilities reasonable rate hikes to assure that future energy needs are met.

But SCANA hurt its own case for that big boost by paying bonuses to staffers and boosting shareholders’ dividend payments this year. Paying nearly 10 percent more for electricity would be a heavy burden for residents and businesses even during an economic upturn. During these persisting tough times, such an increase would inflict severe hardship on many South Carolinians.

So the Public Service Commission, after carefully examining the request and hearing from those rightly concerned customers, approved a 4.88 increase last week — over the next two years (2.5 percent this month, 1.2 percent in July 2011 and 1.18 percent in July 2012). As the panel put it in a written statement: “The company’s customers have certainly made their feelings known about this case from the very beginning.”

While SCE&G agreed not to seek another increase for two years, it already had asked in May for an additional 2.73 percent hike to help cover the costs of nuclear-plant expansion north of Columbia. The Public Service Commission should carefully scrutinize that request, too.

And customers shouldn’t hesitate to tell the PSC just what they think about it. Clearly, the commission is listening.

The (Charleston) Post and Courier