Legislation that could overhaul the way North Carolina sets electricity rates turned Tuesday into a bill that would study the issue instead, delaying changes the state's largest utility has pushed for.

The vote was a close one and bipartisan: 63-51 to rework a key section of Senate Bill 559, which has seen some of the heaviest lobbying of the legislative session.

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The bill would still change the way Duke Energy and other utilities finance replacements and repairs in the wake of major storms, a part of the bill expected to save customers money and that has widespread backing in the General Assembly.

But another section – a section the energy giant and bill supporters repeatedly declined to split off from the more popular measure – now calls on the North Carolina Utilities Commission to assemble a study group to look at modernizing the state's regulatory structure instead of moving forward on that modernization in a way Duke proposed.

The fight isn't over. This bill will head back to the Senate, which may not look kindly on the change the House approved. Sen. Ralph Hise, R-Mitchell, one of several bill sponsors, said after the House vote that he wasn't "inclined to do a study."

If the Senate doesn't go along with the change, the bill will sit in limbo while leaders from both chambers hash the issue out in a conference committee. Gov. Roy Cooper's administration will play a part as well. Fears that the governor, who has publicly expressed concerns with that portion of the bill, would veto the measure contributed to a significant delay in its progress ahead of Tuesday's vote.

Duke and other utilities come before the state Utilities Commission routinely to ask for rate increases to cover new construction. Senate Bill 559 initially have allowed the commission to approve those plans three years at a time, a change the company said it needed to improve planning.

The bill also would have changed the company's profit structure. Right now, the commission caps Duke's profits by setting its allowed return on equity just under 10 percent. With the new banded returns contemplated in the bill, the commission would approve a profit range, with anything within 1.25 percent of the band's midpoint allowed.

Critics feared this would allow the regulated monopoly to earn hundreds of millions more than it would have otherwise – and with less scrutiny under the multi-year rate plan option.

Supporters countered by changing the bill so extra profits would be invested into infrastructure and efficiency programs in lower-income communities, a change that boosted the bill for some legislators but didn't put the measure over the hump.

Even so, there is widespread agreement that the state's regulatory structure needs to change.

The Cooper administration released an energy plan late last week that called for a study similar to what the bill now contemplates, looking not only at Duke's preferred multi-year plans and return-on-equity banding, but other changes as well.