NC utility regulators cut a year of red tape to plug a rare-earth magnet plant into the grid

The North Carolina Utilities Commission on Monday waived its standard public-notice and hearing requirements to fast-track a 1.31-mile, 230-kilovolt transmission line in Johnston County, the hookup that lets Vulcan Elements' $920M, 1,000-worker rare-earth magnet plant power up by the end of March.

Rare-earth magnets are the small but essential components inside drones, submarines, aircraft, satellites, and electric vehicles. The U.S. government has been trying to onshore that supply chain since China tightened its grip on the market, and Vulcan's Benson plant is one of the facilities the federal government has underwritten with hundreds of millions of dollars in Defense Production Act funding.

The commission's vote traded procedural public participation for speed. South River Electric Membership Corp is now designing, securing right-of-way, and ordering equipment in parallel. Utility VP David Keith said the co-op has been compressing what would be a five-year project into an 18-month timeline since November. Vulcan is covering the roughly $7.25M line cost along the Highway 301 corridor to its Morgan Road site, in Johnston County.

Vulcan COO Jake Bowles told commissioners that "the criticality of this project cannot be understated," and the commission accepted the Defense Production Act framing as the urgent-need basis under state law. The federal government has not published a schedule for when the plant's contracted output ships or when the rare-earth decoupling payoff lands; that timing is the open question.