![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/69/Grapevinesnail_01.jpg/220px-Grapevinesnail_01.jpg)
Greg Roberts, Vice President of Pricing and Planning for Georgia Power in Atlanta, wrote for the Savannah Morning News today, The solar sleight of hand. I’ll only quote part of his concluding paragraph.
Georgia Power is involved in many efforts to expand the use solar energyUsually dragged along behind reluctantly, as in when it took Georgia Power a month or more to connect an installation in Valdosta after the solar panels and inverters were installed in less than a week.
and currently has over 55 megawatts of solar power in its portfolio of generating sources to serve all customers without significant rate impacts.Mostly because the PSC forced gapower to do that, overriding Georgia Power’s lobbying for once.
Or maybe instead that was a trade for the PSC letting Georgia Power charge Construction Work in Progress for the two nukes its parent company The Southern Company is building, and for Georgia Power being able to pass all nuke cost overruns on to customers. Does that sound like an even trade to you?
What do you want to do? What gapower recommends:
We should proceed with caution, take the time to evaluate all the pros and cons thoroughly….
Or maybe we should look at what 46 other states have already done, pick what works, and get on with it. That plus build on what our home-grown inventors and entrepeneurs such as Drs. Smith and Godbey are already doing.
Oh, my: Greg Roberts is responsible for Market Planning and Resource Policy and Planning. Well, that’s too bad. Georgia Power could be generating a lot of solar energy itself and selling it to more northerly states. Or profiting from collecting percentages on distributed generation without even having to finance or install the generating capacity. Come on up to the 21st century, Georgia Power!
-jsq
PS: No snails were harmed in the making of this post. And apologies to their entire genus for the comparison.
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