Century Aluminum Announced New Power Supply Contract with Santee Cooper

SEATTLE (Scrap Monster): Century Aluminum announced that it has entered into a new multi-year agreement with Santee Cooper towards supply of power to the company’s Mount Holly plant. The new power contract was approved by the Santee Cooper board of Directors on Monday.

The new agreement will allow Century Aluminum to continue its operations at the Mount Holly plant, thus securing around 300 jobs at the facility. Moreover, the new contract will lead to the company increasing its operations at the plant, which in turn may create new jobs as well.

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The power utility will serve Century under an “experimental rate”, taking advantage of incremental power, excess capacity available until the Winyah Units 3 and 4 retire by end-2021. The agreement, which runs through end-2023, will free up 150 megawatts of transmission capacity, which the company has used during its existing contract. Consequently, the utility can now use that capacity for economic wholesale market sales and purchases.

Earlier, Century Aluminum had warned that they might be forced to shut down the Mount Holly smelter facility by the end of the current year, if no agreement is reached with Santee Cooper on supply of power.