Duke Energy has begun negotiating with the North Carolina Eastern Municipal Power Agency to purchase the agency's minority stake in two nuclear plants.
The NCEMPA owns 18.3 percent of both reactors at the Brunswick plant and 16.2 percent of the reactor at the Harris plant. Both are located in North Carolina. Duke took ownership of the remaining interest in both plants when it acquired Progress Energy in 2012.
In a release Monday, Duke said an agreement would include a wholesale power contract to continue providing electricity to NCEMPA customers. A purchase would also include coal-burning generation at the Mayo and Roxboro plants. The consortium of 32 North Carolina municipalities currently owns about 700 megawatts of power generation from all of the plants. The purchase discussions follow an announcement last week that Santee Cooper will sell 5 percent of the new reactors at the V.C. Summer plant to South Carolina Electric & Gas after negotiations to sell a share to Duke faltered.