Actually installing the Wiregrass Solar LLC plant is Hannah Solar. Speaking here is Patrick T. O’Donnell, Managing Partner, who talks about two other Hannah Solar people standing there, Project Manager Dave Fisher, and CEO Pete Marte. Here’s the video.

Wiregrass Solar LLC groundbreaking, 21 Feb 2011,
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia.
Video by John S. Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange. According to the VDT CEO Marte later said:

“Solar energy is definitely part of the solution for water issues in Georgia, and it’s not being talked about. When the president of Georgia Power is the chairman of the water commission and 52 percent of water is being used for power generation, you’ve got the fox in the henhouse,” said Pete Marte, chief executive officer of Hannah Solar.

According to VDT commenter Solar All The Way:

The CEO of Hannah Solar told us that in most other states solar industry has fewer regulatory hurdles than in Georgia. He urged everyone who supports solar to call their legislators and ask them to vote for HB 146. He said that they could have easily built a solar plant 5 times as big as the one Valdosta got. Other states are embracing solar’s clean, green, totally renewable industry and creating jobs, jobs, and more jobs—like the solar panels made in Dublin, Georgia, and providing incomes for 350 employees, some of which are going to be shipped out of state because Georgia limits the building of solar plants here. Georgia Power evidently has a monopoly and keeps politicians in thrall.

Col. Ricketts said in a VCLIA board meeting that the plant just being installed can be expanded in two directions, making it about five times its current size. CEO Marte also mentioned (I believe to Mayor Fretti) that there are variable mounts that follow the sun, and there are also mirror-and-boiler solar systems such as are being used in California that don’t even require silicon.

Even more than that could be done in Georgia, with solar on housetops and business roofs. The new county palace could have solar panels on its roof, for example, as could Valdosta City Hall or Hahira tobacco warehouses. That kind of solar installation mostly supplies the building it’s on or local uses, and requires no heavy use of the grid. This kind of thing was pioneered in Austin, Texas, as Chairman Sonny Murphy of Sterling Planet told me he was aware, since he talked to AustinEnergy some years ago.

-jsq

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