Category Archives: GA PSC

IKEA building almost as much solar as Southern Company

IKEA has already deployed more solar power than Southern Company, and plans almost as much as SO’s total planned solar generation. Remind me, which one is the energy company? Maybe we need to elect people who will remind Southern Company and Georgia Power.

Remember Southern Company bragged earlier this month about its first big solar project coming online, 1 megawatt in Upson? IKEA plans to install that much solar in Atlanta this year on top of its furniture store:

Atlanta, Georgia: With a store size of 366,000 square feet, ft2 (~34,000 square metres, m2) on 15 acres (~6 hectares), the solar program will use 129,800 ft2 (~12,060 m2) at 1,038 kilowatts (kW) with 4,326 solar panels generating 1,421,300kWh/year. This is equivalent to reducing 1,080 tons of carbon-dioxide (CO2), 192 cars’ emissions or powering 122 homes.

IKEA plans more than that in Savannah, 1.5 megawatts:

Savannah, Georgia Distribution Centre: With a size of 750,000 ft2 (~69,700 m2) on 115 acres (~46.5 hectares), the solar program will use 187,500 ft2 (~17,400 m2) at 1,500kW with 6,250 solar panels generating 2,029,500kWh/year. This is equivalent to reducing 1,542 tons of CO2, 274 cars’ emissions or powering 175 homes.

Sure, but Southern Company already did it first, right? Nope, IKEA already powered up a megawatt in Houston, and already had some in Frisco and Round Rock, Texas, making IKEA already the largest solar owner in Texas.

As Kirsty Hessman put it in Earth Techling 8 December 2011,

They don’t call it the Sunbelt for nothing, and Ikea plans to take full advantage of the salubrious solar situation down South.

That was when IKEA was planning the Houston, Frisco, and Round Rock, Texas solar installations. Half a year later, they’re up and running. When will your new nukes be finished (if ever), Southern Company?

But back to solar. According to IKEA PR 9 July 2012, IKEA plans 38 MW of solar:

Continue reading →

GA PSC Forum videos online now

I hear somebody asked about Georgia Power's Construction Work in Progress (CWIP) stealth tax charge to customers for Southern Company's new nukes at Plant Vogtle. Maybe some of these candidates for the Public Service Commission could help get Georgia Power and SO to stop suppressing solar and wind in Georgia, maybe even to lead the way.

GIPL wrote today,

Thanks to everyone who came out to our Political Forum on the Georgia Public Service Commission. We had a great turnout, and learned a lot about the 2012 candidates for the PSC.

This is a statewide election, so please share this video far and wide with your friends. The primary election will be held on July 31, and the PSC will also be on the ballot in November.

Participants in last night's forum included (from left to right) Republican Matthew Reid and Democrat Steve Oppenheimer, who are both challenging incumbent Republican Commissioner Chuck Eaton in District 3, and Republican Pam Davidson and Libertarian David Staples, who are running against incumbent Republican Commissioner Stan Wise in District 5.

Beth Bond from Southeast Green moderated the media panel featuring Kristi Swartz from the Atlanta Journal Constitution, Walter Jones from Morris News Service, and Jonathan Shapiro from WABE.

Georgia Interfaith Power & Light hosted this forum. Co-hosts included 14 local environmental, religious, and advocacy organizations, including Southeast Green, Georgia WAND, GA Sierra Club, Civic League of Regional Atlanta, Glenn Memorial UMC Environmental Committee, GreenLaw, Southeast Energy Efficiency Alliance, Common Cause, League of Women Voters, Georgia Watch, Ryan Taylor Architects LLC, Sustainable Atlanta, Regional Council of Churches of Atlanta, Inc., Trinity Presbyterian Church Sustainability Committee, and the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy.

Here's the video:

-jsq

Duke and Progress to buy Santee-Cooper’s Summer nuke?

I erred in saying Duke owns nuclear Summer Station in North Carolina: it’s actually owned by SCANA and Santee Cooper. But I wasn’t as wrong as I thought. It looks like somebody’s been pressuring Duke and Progress, the two utilities currently maybe merging, to buy Summer.

John D. Runkle, attorney for NC WARN, hand-delivered a letter to Robert Gruber Executive Director Public Staff of the NC Utilities Commission on 18 June 2012, Re: INVESTIGATION — Duke-Progress Merger

In preparing comments on the Duke-Progress merger on behalf of the NC Waste Awareness and Reduction Network (NC WARN), we came across several reports that South Carolina officials, including the South Carolina Public Service Commission, were pressuring the utilities to purchase the State-owned Santee Cooper’s shares of the V.C. Summer Nuclear Generating Station.

Santee Cooper owns one-third of the present reactor and 45% of the proposed units 2 and 3. Based on the recent cost estimate of $9.8 billion, buying Santee Cooper’s share would add about $4.5 billion to the cost of the merger. But those are low-ball estimates; other nuclear units in the Southeast are projected to cost roughly twice as much. Realistically, purchasing Santee Cooper’s share would likely add much more to the cost of the merger.

We were unable to find any filings in either the South Carolina or North Carolina dockets regarding the V.C. Summer Station. If a purchase of nuclear units in South Carolina has been made a condition to the merger, it should be part of the public record, and not as some backroom negotiation.

I’d like to see that.

Even more I’d like to see this:

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Live streaming of Public Service Commission Forum tonight

All candidates for the Georgia Public Service Commission at a forum tonight, 7-9PM 12 July 2012. GA PSC is the body that says Georgia Power can charge its customers for cost overruns for the new nukes at Plant Vogtle; the new nukes that will suck up even more water and are already sucking up lots of money through the stealth tax Construction Work in Progress (CWIP) charge on Georgia Power customer bills. GA PSC did require Georgia Power to buy 50 MW of solar, but that’s pennies compared to the dollars Georgia Power and Southern Company are shovelling into that pit by the Savannah River. Who will stand up and say enough nuclear is too much, and let’s get on with solar and wind?

Georgia Interfaith Power and Light blogged today, PSC Debate Tonight,

Tonight, GIPL is joining forces with 14 local organizations to host a Political Forum with this year’s candidates for the Public Service Commission.

We’re having technical difficulties with the live web stream. We hope it will be up and running tonight, but if not, the debate will be posted online this week. You can check this website tonight at 7pm for live web streaming, or watch our twitter feed @GeorgiaIPL for updates.

When: Thursday, July 12, 7 – 9 p.m.
Where: Glenn Memorial UMC’s Auditorium/Sanctuary
1660 N. Decatur Road
Atlanta, GA 30307

All four challengers in the 2012 race have confirmed their attendance. Participants

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AP nuclear slant through omission

What's missing in AP's reporting and analysis of nuclear cost overruns?

AP published this Tuesday, News Guide: Nuclear industry facing cost pressures, perhaps as a companion to its story of the same day, Building costs increase at US nuclear sites. Like that story, the news guide is full of accurate and useful information about nuclear cost overruns, and even this good bit of analysis:

Q: Why do building costs matter to customers?

A: Because customers ultimately pay for the construction costs as part of their monthly power bills. The more a plant costs, the more customers will pay.

Yep, Georgia Power customers are already paying through that stealth tax, the construction work in progress (CWIP) charge for new nuke electricity they won't get for years if ever.

Yet something is missing. Can you spot it?

Hint:

Q: How does that compare with building coal- or gas-powered plants?

Good question, and AP correctly answers that nuclear plants are far pricier than coal or gas plants.

But are those three the only sources of energy? Where is the comparison to solar and wind power?

Well, maybe AP won't do it, but here it is already, Georgia Power deploys 1 MW solar; could have done 330 MW by now. Short version: for less than the amount of federal loan guarantees for Plant Vogtle, Southern Company could have built Georgia more solar energy production per capita than Germany, the world leader, has.

Why are we letting Georgia Power and the Southern Company pour our money down that pit near the Savannah River when they could be spending it to deploy solar and wind for more jobs, energy independence, and more profit for Georgia Power and SO? Oh, and clean air and plenty of clean water, too.

-jsq

Georgia Power deploys 1 MW solar; could have done 330 MW by now

Let’s compare Georgia Power’s 1 megawatt Upson solar plant with what Georgia Power and Southern Company could be doing if they weren’t wasting so much money on nukes at Plant Vogtle.

S. Heather Duncan reported for the Macon Telegraph, First big Ga. Power solar project comes online in Upson. Yay! Georgia Power and its parent the Southern Company (SO) will have a hard time now saying solar power doesn’t work in Georgia. But let’s compare the megawatts and put that in perspective.

Solar Megawatts

That’s right: we could have had 3,000 times as much solar production by now. All SO would have to do Continue reading →

One Japanese nuclear reactor back online

Not surprising, but quite possibly not a good idea. Mari Yamaguchi wrote for AP yesterday, Japan powered by nuclear energy again, blamed anew,

Nuclear power returned to Japan’s energy mix for the first time in two months Thursday, hours before a parliamentary panel blamed the government’s cozy relations with the industry for the meltdowns that prompted the mass shutdown of the nation’s reactors.

Though the report echoes other investigations into last year’s disaster at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant, it could fuel complaints that Japan is trying to restart nuclear reactors without doing enough to avoid a repeat. Thursday’s resumption of operations at a reactor in Ohi, in western Japan, already had been hotly contested.

Government officials and the utility that runs the Ohi plant announced last month that the No. 3 reactor had passed stringent safety checks and needed to be brought back online to ward off blackouts during the high-demand summer months. Another Ohi reactor, No. 4, is set to restart later this month and the government hopes to restart more of Japan’s 50 working reactors as soon as possible.

“We have finally taken this first step,” said Hideki Toyomatsu, vice president of Kansai Electric Power Co., which operates the Ohi plant. “But it is just a first step.”

Maybe they’re like Southern Company (SO) CEO Thomas A. Fanning,who said he’d Continue reading →

SO CEO Fanning: Policy, jobs, and the economy plus fracking

You may have wondered, how was Southern Company (SO) CEO Thomas A. Fanning so ready and able to respond at length to any question at the SO shareholder meeting? Because he’s a class A CEO who does his homework, such as this white paper he wrote dated September 2011: American Energy Policy, Jobs and the Economy, in which he explains what he meant by “the revolution we have seen in the shale gas industry”.

So, natural gas is important, but it’s not a panacea. Here’s why.

First, the reason prices have dropped so far is because of a new technology called fracking, which releases natural gas from so-called tight rock formations, such as shale gas. Fracking is the injection of chemicals underground, which have the effect of fracturing the rock deposits, thereby releasing the natural gas. There are environmental concerns around the chemicals associated with the fracking process. Those concerns have to be resolved.

Those concerns range from polluted groundwater to earthquakes. It’s great that SO is turning away from coal. I don’t think it’s so great to trade dirty air from coal for dirty water and earthquakes from fracking.

Secondly, many of these shale gas deposits are in places where there is no sufficient pipeline infrastructure necessary to move the gas to the places it’s needed to generate the electricity. Pipelines will have to be built. It will take time. We need to resolve that issue, too.

Meanwhile, rooftop solar Continue reading →

Internet speed and access —John S. Quarterman @ LCC 2012-05-08

At a recent Lowndes County Commission meeting, I said:

I was interested to learn two weeks ago that my neighbor Timothy Nessmith was interested in getting DSL on Hambrick Road.

He said you can get it as close to him as Quarterman Road. I can attest to that because I have 3 megabit per second DSL, due to being just close enough to Bellsouth’s DSL box on Cat Creek Road, but most of Quarterman Road can’t get DSL due to distance. There are some other land-line possibilties, involving cables in the ground or wires on poles.

Then there are wireless possibilities, including EVDO, available from Verizon, with 750 kilobit per second (0.75 Mbps) wide area access from cell phone towers.

Verizon’s towers could also be used for WIFI antennas, for up to 8 Mbps Internet access, over a wide scale.

Then there’s metropolitan-area Internet. Chattanooga has the fastest such network, with 1 Gbps (1,000 Mbps). But hundreds of communities around the country have such networks, including (continued after the video)…

Internet speed and access —John S. Quarterman
Regular Session, Lowndes County Commission (LCC),
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 8 May 2012.
Video by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE).

…Lafayette, Louisiana, Bowling Green, Kentucky, Lagrange, Georgia, and Thomasville, Georgia. They use it for public safety, education (Wiregrass Tech, VSU), and

It attracts new industry. If you want knowledge-based industry, they’re going to be expecting Internet access not just at work, but at home, whereever they live.

Other uses include Continue reading →

Solar Lowndes High?

What does the world see driving north up I-75 past Valdosta? The empty roofs of Lowndes High School. Every south-facing one of which could hold solar panels.


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That would do more to put Lowndes County and Valdosta on the map as supporting solar and thus knowledge-based jobs than any amount of exit beautification.

Run out of roof space? What about those parking lots:


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And it wouldn’t take a Ted Turner to do it. In all but a few states the Lowndes County Board of Education (LCBOE) could let a private company finance and install all those solar panels and then lease the electricity for a fixed rate for 20 years, greatly reducing the school’s electricity bill and promoting our local community, all without any expense to we the taxpayers.

But you can’t do that in Georgia! Because Georgia Power doesn’t want us to. Unless we get some laws changed. Follow the link for how.

-jsq

PS: I haven’t forgotten Valdosta High School. All the economic advantages would apply just as well for the Valdosta Board of Education and Valdosta taxpayers. Even Valwood could do this and profit. If we get Georgia law changed to permit it.