A decade-old challenge to the funding stream for Georgia Power Company's troubled nuclear power project at Plant Vogtle has once again run out of steam, with a Georgia Court of Appeals decision affirming the validity of add-on charges to customers' bills to help cover billions of dollars in construction costs for the two reactors.

The class action targeting the add-ons to help pay for the project—which was supposed to begin generating electricity in 2016 but is billions of dollars over budget and has yet to generate one kilowatt of energy—aims to represent more than 2.3 million residential and industrial ratepayers who have been assessed "usage fees" by the utility.