Category Archives: GA PSC

GA Senate unanimously approved solar financing bill

Friday’s vote started at least a year and a half ago. Organized years-long activism is paying off for everyone.

Summer before last, after statewide requests by Georgia Sierra Club, Greenlaw, and many others: Georgia PSC required Georgia Power to buy twice as much solar power. About a year later, Mary Landers, Savannahnow, 18 November 2014, Georgia is fastest growing solar market,

Last year the Georgia Public Service Commission approved a motion for Georgia Power, the state’s largest utility, to add 525 MW of solar power generation to its portfolio by 2016.

“That pushed out the growth of solar, especially projecting forward,” Continue reading →

Minnesota follows Austin with Value of Solar Tariff: better than net metering, or not?

Yes, it’s better than the unequal “net metering” Georgia has now, where your one-and-only utility pays you a rate they determine, typically their “avoided” rate of not generating energy by some other means, which is usually a lot less than what you pay your utility. Is it better than real one-to-one net metering? That’s a harder question, because even if it pays more now, it’s less predictable. In any case VOST has spread from Austin to Minnesota.

Herman K. Trabish, GreenTechMedia, 10 April 2014, A Rising Tension: ‘Value-of-Solar’ Tariff Versus Net Metering,


Source: Institute for Local Self Reliance

The Alliance for Solar Choice, a group made up of Continue reading →

Burnt Church Road: 2 megaWatts solar in Lanier County

The answer is: Burnt Church Road is the location of the 2 MW Lakeland Solar Farm, conveniently next to what appears to be a Georgia Power substation. The landowner appears from the Lanier County tax assessor maps to be Patten Seed Company. Compare this map to the big image in the previous post and they clearly show the same location. Apparently nobody has satellite images of Lanier County new enough yet to show the solar panels. Continue reading →

2 megaWatts solar in Lanier County

Somebody told me a few weeks ago there’s a big solar farm near Lakeland. He was not very specific about where, but it’s big: two megawatts, organized by a company out of Chicago. Can anybody point me to where it is so I can go take pictures?

Evergreen Solar Services says,

2.0 MW Lakeland, GA
Completed in 2014, 2 — 1.0 MW Georgia Power ASI projects. Fixed tilt PV with central inverters, medium voltage interconnected.

You can see by this Evergreen Solar Services picture that Continue reading →

Mississippi PSC required spending docs for Kemper Coal: what about Plant Vogtle?

Maybe Georgia PSC could do about Georgia Power’s nuclear Plant Vogtle what Mississippi PSC did about Mississippi Power’s Kemper Coal: hold their parent Southern Company accountable for cost overruns. And for pipelines!

Sam R. Hall blogged for Daily Ledes 1 November 2013, Sources: U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz to visit Kemper coal plant,

The PSC voted unanimously to require Mississippi Power to provide additional documents justifying their spending on the Kemper plant. The hearing is set for May 2014, when the plant was originally supposed to go online.

“If the PSC rejects some of the spending as imprudent, it could add to the $1 billion in costs that shareholders have already agreed to absorb,” the Associated Press reported last month.

Meanwhile, GA PSC Continue reading →

Southern Company missed earnings: weather and Kemper Coal and nuclear Plant Vogtle

SO CEO Tom Fanning continued to blame slow sales and earnings on mild weather (air conditioners running less), but the big boondoggle going bad is Kemper Coal, which has slipped six months from May 2014 to Q4 2014, and even the Wall Street Journal calls it “possibly the most expensive fossil-fuel power plant ever built in the U.S”. How bad will SO’s stock tank when SO’s even more expensive nuclear Plant Vogtle slips even more? Dividends can’t prop up SO’s share price forever, not when PSCs are revolting against the rate hikes and guaranteed profit hikes that prop up those dividends. When will Southern Company and Georgia Power get out front and lead in solar and wind power? Before or after the public, state public service commissions, and investors make them do it?

Justin Loiseau wrote for DailyFinance 4 November 2013, Southern Company Earnings: A $5 Billion Blunder? Continue reading →

Against rate hike and solar fee by Georgia Power

If you missed Savannah, Columbus tomorrow, then Gainesville, Athanes, and Atlanta: you can speak up against Georgia Power’s attempt to charge you for saving them money by generating solar power.

Mary Landers wrote for SavannahNow Friday, Ga. Power proposed rate hike, solar fee blasted,

“Unconscionable” and “theft” were two of the words used Thursday evening to describe a residential rate hike and fee on solar installations proposed by Georgia Power.

More than 50 people attended a meeting sponsored by Georgia Watch and the Sierra Club at the Coastal Georgia Center to discuss the issues.

The rate hike, proposed in July, would have average residential customers paying almost $8 more a month. Some homeowners with solar panels would pay a new monthly fee of about $22 by Georgia Power’s estimations.

Video by WJCL News: Continue reading →

GA PSC abdicates cost oversight for new nukes at Plant Vogtle

Finish it and then send we the taxpayers and ratepayers a bill? What kind of deal is that? So Southern Company already dodged a Fitch downgrade by delaying a decision, and now GA PSC wants to put it off for years more. That also delays solar deployment in Georgia, putting us still farther behind.

Ray Henry wrote for AP yesterday, Ga. approves deal on nuclear plant costs,

A debate over the rising cost of building a nuclear power plant in Georgia will be delayed for years under an agreement approved Tuesday by Georgia’s utility regulators.

The elected members of Georgia’s Public Service Commission unanimously approved a deal that will put off a decision on whether Georgia Power can raise its budget for building two more nuclear reactors at Plant Vogtle (VOH’-gohl) until the first of those reactors is finished. An independent state monitor has estimated the first reactor will be finished in January 2018 at the earliest.

Regulators will continue monitoring company spending but will not make a decision on raising the bottom line budget figure.

So GA PSC will keep watching costs run over budget but will do nothing about it.

Oh, wait, it’s actually worse: Continue reading →

AGL pipeline station in Atlanta leaking, eroding, substandard construction

Citizens are calling for GA PSC Chuck Eaton to call it off. Since apparently GA PSC does have authority over natural gas pipelines, maybe we should talk to our Commissioner H. Doug Everett about that proposed Sabal Trail natural gas pipeline through Lowndes County. Wasting resources on natural gas now is foolish when solar will overtake everything within a decade and we should be getting on with sun power for Lowndes County instead of methane for Florida.

Brookhaven Post 23 August 2013, Deteriorating conditions at AGL regulator station site has citizens calling for its removal,

An Atlanta Gas Light (AGL) regulator station that is being constructed on Parcel 36 off of Clairmont Rd., has been a project of concern for some time now. Site conditions such as trenches full of water, deteriorating banks, eroding foundations, corrosion, substandard and hazardous construction practices, and a host of other issues, have become the catalyst to amplifying an effort to have Public Service Commissioner, Chuck Eaton, intervene and ask that AGL cease construction and remove the station.

-jsq

Climate change adversely affecting U.S. power grid

Yes, and moving away from baseload coal, nukes, and natural gas and towards distributed solar and wind power will help with that, both directly by making the grid more resilient, and indirectly by slowing climate change.

Clare Foran wrote for NationalJournal 12 August 2013, Climate Change Is Threatening the Power Grid: So says the White House, in a new report that recommends strengthening the grid.

Just days away from the 10-year anniversary of the worst power outage in U.S. history, the White House and the Energy Department released a report on Monday evaluating the resiliency of the nation’s electric grid and recommending steps to prevent future blackouts.

The report called storms and severe weather “the leading cause of power outages in the United States,” and warned against the steep cost of weather-related damage to the electric grid. It put the price tag for electrical failures caused by inclement weather at between $18 billion and $33 billion annually, and noted that costs have increased in recent years, jumping from a range of $14 billion to $26 billion in 2003 to $27 billion to $52 billion in 2012. Storms exceeding a billion dollars in damages (electrical and otherwise) have also become more frequent in the past decade, as the chart below shows.

Well, Entergy’s Arkansas Nuclear 1 (ANO1) is still down more than four months after a fatal accident (hey, look at that; Continue reading →