A proposal from a start-up business promises to lower electricity
rates by rebating profits to customers if given a chance to compete
as Georgia Power Co.’s “mirror image.”
To proceed with its long-range plan of developing 2 gigawatts of
solar power, the start-up, Georgia Solar Utilities Inc., wants to
start by building an 80-megawatt “solar farm” near
Milledgeville as soon as it gets a green light from the Georgia
Public Service Commission. GaSU filed its request last week, and as
of Monday, it’s still too fresh for public evaluation.
So radical is the proposal that spokespersons for Georgia Power and
the Georgia Solar Energy Association said they still were evaluating
it and could not comment.
Groups that normally advocate for customers also are staying quiet.
GaSU executives recognize such a big change won’t come easily.
A captive Public Service Commission that
rubber-stamps costs for Plant Vogtle.
In case there was any doubt as to the PSC’s role in legitimizing those new nukes,
the very next day Fitch reaffirmed Southern Company’s bond ratings.
Southern Company’s regulated utility subsidiaries derive predictable
cash flows from low-risk utility businesses, enjoy relatively
favorable regulatory framework in their service territories, and
exhibit limited commodity price risks due to the ability to recover
fuel and purchased power through separate cost trackers.
A pressure group for privatizing schools is the origin of the jargon
in the charter school referendum on the November Georgia ballot.
And yes, it’s tied to ALEC.
Provides for improving student achievement and parental
involvement through more public charter school options.
Where else is that wording found?
Combinations of the three phrases “student achievement”, “parental involvement”,
and “charter school” actually are not very common, according to google.
But the Parent Trigger wrote in
Empowering Parents,
Policy initiatives that empower parents are likely to increase
parental involvement and satisfaction and raise student achievement
by inviting parents into the process.
What process?
The designers of the California Parent Trigger made a grave mistake
by leaving tepid reform modules in the bill and allowing districts
to override the parents’ reform choice.
The Georgia constitutional amendment wouldn’t leave school districts
any ability to decide anything.
To get a decent deal on streetlights, a small Georgia city may have
to help change the Georgia Public Service Commission.
Or, an energy concern in Hahira happened to coincide with
a visit by PSC candidate Steve Oppenheimer.
Ralph Clendenin, City Council member, is looking into converting
Hahira's streetlights to LEDs or maybe solar.
He has discussed that with Georgia Power, which will do it for
$250,000 up front.
At a savings of $1,000 a month, that would take quite a while to pay back:
more than 20 years.
Just like you're looking at options the city might do for better choices for lighting
in terms of serving the people and meeting your budget, as Georgians we need that, too.
He indicated that there are more solutions than we're being told.
To me what's improtant are homeowners rights,
and we get control over the power rates,
because our residential rates and small business rates have gone up about 31% in five years.
What it comes down to is people like you in this room in the small communities
figuring out what pieces do we put together to make our community better for tomorrow.
Afterwards in the entranceway,
Ralph Clendenin showed Steve Oppenheimer how
he'd figured out that Georgia Power was charging about 73% maintenance
above the electricity cost of the streetlights.
Oppenheimer said there were many options.
Clendenin suggested one:
The option I see right now is, the Commission somehow, has got to change the rules
on how Georgia Power… structures payments.
Oppenheimer suggested a way to get there:
We need a commission with some new leadership,
with some separation from industry, that doesn't have the
apparent conflicts of interest.
Ralph summed it up pithily:
Ralph Clendenin: 73% is that forever payment to Georgia Power.
Steve Oppenheimer: It's a great deal, if you're on the right end of it.
[laughter]
What say we change the end of the stick we the taxpayers are getting from the PSC?
Work Session, Hahira City Council, Hahira, Lowndes County, Georgia, 1 October 2012.
Videos by John S. Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE).
In the same month, both the Lowndes County Democratic Party
and the Valdosta Tea Party
had speakers explaining how bad the charter school amendment is.
Neither group took a vote, but it seemed pretty clear most of the
attendees at both meetings were against that referendum on the November ballot,
and mostly for the same reason: nobody wants an unelected state committee
taking away local control and local tax revenue.
Parental choice is one thing, and charter schools are another,
but nobody seemed to like Atlanta taking away local control.
This isn’t a Democrat vs. Republican debate.
Legislators voted across party lines to put the constitutional amendment on the ballot.
Republican and Democrat voters must defeat it together.
You can watch for yourself.
Here are the two presentations:
Lowndes County Schools Assistant Superintendent Troy Davis
gave his personal opinion:
“it’s about control”.
The charter school amendment on the November ballot is not about
charter schools, which any community in the state can create now.
It’s about control by the state of local schools and resources.
Dr. Davis pointed out Georgia already has 350 charter schools, up from
160 three years ago.
All but 19 were established and agreed upon by local communities.
There’s a successful one in Berrien County, established by the
Berrien County school board.
The process to create more is in place in every community.
If we wanted one in Lowndes County, all it would take would be for
one of the two school systems (Lowndes or Valdosta)
to approve one.
He suggested looking at the sources of funds for Families for Better Schools,
which is backing the amendment.
Top of the list is a Wal-Mart heir.
(It’s
Alice Walton.
Dr. Davis deferred to Al Rowell for that information,
and that’s also where I heard about Alice Walton.
And as I discovered,
the Walton Family Foundation put in much more
than that last year.)
He noted the bulk of the rest comes from for-profit school operators.
(They include
K12 Inc. of Virginia.)
He noted that the state of Georgia just passed this fiscal year
the third largest budget
in the history of Georgia, $19.1 billion.
Yet the public schools have been cut $6.6 billion (apparently since 2002).
And the Lowndes County school system lost nearly $8 million last year,
and $43 million in the past 10 years.
So he asked:
Keep in mind that this company is based in Virginia, so our tax
dollars from say, South Georgia meant for our school teachers,
administraters, supplies, and educating our students, would go to
bolster the economy in Virginia and line the pockets of the very
rich. Meanwhile we have to raise taxes to simply educate the
students attending our public schools. This is clearly NOT a plan to
‘improve academic achievement’ as the preamble boldly lies.
The preamble is boldly inaccurate and completely biased. The wording
added to the question on the ballot implies that the amendment would
improve student achievement and parent involvement. My stars, what
breathing individual doesn’t want those things.
Facts are that by some measures charter schools perform 3% worse
than traditional public schools. We would hope that schools where
parents have to sign a commitment of parent involvement would have
superior parent involvement. Might I just add that students can be
kicked out of charter schools and all students are educated in the
Traditional Public School setting as per our Georgia constitution.
The ‘biased and inaccurate’ wording in the preamble to the charter
schools question is not found in
HB 1162, the law that allowed this
question to be placed on the ballot. It is not in
HB 797, the law
thaw would be enacted should the amendment pass. NO the wording that
is on the preamble comes straight out of ALEC documents, which are
the equivalent of ‘legislation for Dummies’ with a particular slant
as you might imagine.
Leaving another event, I saw this on the street in Charlotte.
Whit Jones said they’d just had a demonstration demanding Duke Energy dump ALEC.
Also that he had encountered Duke CEO Jim Rogers and asked him when
Duke would dump ALEC.
Rogers was uncommittal.
Here’s
Jones’ blogged account of that encounter:
In short, I asked Duke’s CEO Jim Rogers if he would listen
to the
over 100,000 people who are calling on him to have Duke Dump ALEC
and stop funding voter repression. He responded that “he’d be
listening,” and when I pressed him for a commitment to drop ALEC he
said “I’m not going to give you [a commitment right now] but you can
trust that I’m paying attention to what you’re saying, and you’ll
know in due time.”
On the day she died, Nobel Prize-winning economist Elinor
Ostrom published
her last article, in Project Syndicate, 12 June 2012,
Green from the Grassroots,
This grassroots diversity in “green policymaking” makes
economic sense. “Sustainable cities” attract the
creative, educated people who want to live in a pollution-free,
modern urban environment that suits their lifestyles. This is where
future growth lies. Like upgrading a mobile phone, when people see
the benefits, they will discard old models in a flash.
Of course, true sustainability goes further than pollution control.
City planners must look beyond municipal limits and analyze flows of
resources —
energy,
food,
water, and
people —
into and
out of their cities.
Worldwide, we are seeing a heterogeneous collection of cities
interacting in a way that could have far-reaching influence on how
Earth's entire life-support system evolves. These cities are
learning from one another, building on good ideas and jettisoning
poorer ones. Los Angeles took decades to implement pollution
controls, but other cities, like Beijing, converted rapidly when
they saw the benefits. In the coming decades, we may see a global
system of interconnected sustainable cities emerging. If successful,
everyone will want to join the club.
Wiregrass Activists for Clean Energy (WACE) have made it clear from
the start that biomass plants have a number of issues: 1) biomass
plants bear significant health risks; 2) biomass plants waste
enormous amounts of water; 3) biomass plants are risky investments
in an increasingly competitive energy sector; and 4) biomass plants
contribute to global warming.
In the light of rising global temperatures, worsening drought
conditions, and dropping prices for solar panels, an increasing
number of people are understanding these simple truths.
The Industrial Authority has to be congratulated for the courage to
admit that energy from biomass plants is indeed more expensive than
energy from solar plants, and we have not even figured in the costs
associated with the consequences of air pollution coming from
biomass plants.
Although this point has already been made earlier, note again that
solar plants are much better alternatives, economically and
environmentally: they do not pollute our air, they do not need any
water, and a huge spill of solar energy is simply called a sunny day
… of which we have plenty here in the south.
On one side, Georgia Power faces
GaSU and its 80 or 90 MW solar plant proposal.
Walter C. Jones wrote for OnlineAthens 24 September 2012,
Proposed solar company could stir up Georgia’s utility structure,
To proceed with its long-range plan of developing 2 gigawatts of solar power, the start-up, Georgia Solar Utilities Inc., wants to start by building an 80-megawatt “solar farm” near Milledgeville as soon as it gets a green light from the Georgia Public Service Commission. GaSU filed its request last week, and as of Monday, it’s still too fresh for public evaluation.
The
