Category Archives: Georgia Power

110 MW solar financing: SolarCity and Goldman Sachs

When Goldman Sachs gets in, you know there’s money in solar. They’re certainly not investing half a billion dollars for your health. Of course, if you’re in Georgia, you won’t be getting any of this 110 MW of SolarCity solar on your roof, because of that antique 1973 Territorial Electric Service Act that Georgia Power and Southern Company keep propping up. Maybe we should do something about that. -jsq

PR today, SolarCity and Goldman Sachs Create Largest U.S. Rooftop Solar Lease Financing Platform: Collaboration Expected to Fund more than $500 Million in Solar Projects, 110 Megawatts of Solar Capacity

SAN MATEO, Calif., and NEW YORK, May 16, 2013—SolarCity (Nasdaq: SCTY), a leading provider of clean energy, today announced a lease financing agreement with Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS) to fund more than $500 million in solar power projects; an estimated 110 megawatts in generation capacity for homeowners and businesses.

The financing makes it possible for homeowners, businesses, government and other non-profit organizations to install solar panels with no upfront cost and pay less for clean electricity than they currently pay for utility bills. The agreement was initiated in 2012 and expanded per

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No San Onofre nuke startup decision until June at least –NRC Chair

Two more victories for anti-nuke activists: San Onofre restart decision pushed back at least until June, and webcasts of California Public Utilities Commission hearings going on right now.

Abby Sewell reported for the L.A. Times yesterday, Decision on San Onofre pushed back to June at the earliest,

The plant’s operator Southern California Edison had hoped at one point to have one of the plant’s two units operating by summer, but NRC Chairwoman Allison Macfarlane made it clear that will not happen.

Macfarlane told reporters Tuesday after a speech, “You know, the process is very complicated now. Almost every day it gets a little more complicated…. Right now I can tell you a decision on restart won’t happen until the end of June, certainly after the middle of June.

“It may get pushed back later,” she said. “I don’t know.”

She didn’t say much about the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board (ASLB) decision to require NRC public hearings before any decision on restarting San Onofre, but she did say this:

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NRC tries to ignore hearing requirement for San Onofre nuke restart

Maybe the ASLB was referring to some other NRC that should hold public hearings? The Atomic Safety and Licensing Board (ASLB) agreed with Friends of the Earth (FOE) when it ruled that restarting either San Onofre unit requires a full public hearing like a trial, but the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) interprets that as having nothing to do with its own staff decision process. This is after the city of Los Angeles (and numerous other southern California cities and the San Diego Unified School District) said it didn’t want any decision about restarting any San Onofre reactor/ without a full, transparent, public decision process. The L.A. Times says all this is creating “confusion”. Just last week I heard Georgia Power CEO Paul Bowers say confusion was bad for business. Maybe it will be bad not just for Southern California Edison and its San Onofre nukes, but also for Georgia Power and Southern Company’s 19-month-late and billion-over-budget nuclear boondoggle at Plant Vogtle.

Abby Sewell wrote for the L.A. Times yesterday 7:24 PM, San Onofre ruling creates confusion,

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Highest paid public employee in Georgia?

Come on, guess! You’re right: it’s a football coach. UGA football coaching staff get even more compensation than Paul Bowers, CEO of Georgia Power, or Thomas A. Fanning, CEO of the Southern Company, let alone any insignificant college president or elected official.

If I’m reading the ESPN database right, UGA coaches get around $14 million a year, while Georgia Power CEO Paul Bowers gets only Continue reading →

The Super Bowl of disruptive distributed energy: Georgia Power and Southern Company are losing

It’s literally game-changing time with solar power at the electric utilities, while Georgia Power and Southern Company are sticking with big baseload nuclear, “clean coal”, and natural gas. They cannot win if they don’t even try.

Steven Schultz wrote for Physorg 6 May 2013, Growth of ‘distributed’ electricity generation could transform utility systems,

(Phys.org) —The U.S. electric utility industry faces a critical juncture as new technology and declining prices allow a more “distributed” system of small-scale generators, renewable energy installations and energy-efficiency strategies, according to a group of high-level energy industry executives and regulators who met at Princeton University recently.

“We have a monumental challenge,” said Jon Wellinghoff, chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, who participated in the all-day meeting Friday, April 26. Citing commentary by an analyst who warned of a potential “train wreck” in the industry, Wellinghoff outlined converging tends in which technological advances are allowing consumers and companies to take matters of reliability, security and efficiency into their own hands, while utility companies are under pressure to maintain and upgrade a national electricity system that is broadly accessible.

“Everybody saw the Super Bowl,” Wellinghoff said, referring to the half-hour blackout that disrupted the 2013 football championship.

He didn’t mention that after blacking out the Super Bowl Continue reading →

Look at Southern Company’s safety performance –SO CEO Fanning

SO CEO Fanning on Fukushima At last year’s Southern Company Stockholder Meeting, Southern Company CEO Thomas A. Fanning said about the U.S. nuclear industry and Southern Company’s safety performance:

And if you look at our performance, we absolutely meet the standards that our customers expect and frankly deserve. So let’s start there.

Since then SO has not managed to pour the concrete base correctly at Plant Vogtle and not managed to get a reactor vessel from Savannah port to the site. Also existing Vogtle Unit 1 had a fire while Unit 2 was shut down for almost all of March 2013. The two Plant Hatch reactors, same design as Fukushima, so far as we know still have substandard fire protection and has a chronic problem of radioactive tritium leaking into groundwater. Tritium, even the smallest amounts of which can have negative health effects. And what gets into the watershed spreads in the watershed. The U.S. nuclear industry in general has problems with alcohol, drugs, and broken equipment. But back to SO CEO Fanning about Fukushima: Continue reading →

Bloomberg links MS Kemper Coal cost overruns to GA Plant Vogtle nukes

Betty Liu of Bloomberg quizzes Thomas A. Fanning of Southern Company Bloomberg has video of Southern Company CEO Thomas A. Fanning trying to explain away how cost overruns at SO’s nuclear Plant Vogtle in Georgia are linked to cost overruns SO’s coal Plant Kemper in Mississippi.

Betty Liu: This project along with the Vogtle project… has some investors wondering maybe Southern Company has stretched itself too thin, with these two major projects you’ve got under way….

Fanning: In fact, the Vogtle project is going beautifully. We have delayed the in-service date by a year, but….

That’s funny, GA PSC and the AJC say Continue reading →

Poor Southern Company: losing money on Kemper Coal in Mississippi

Apparently $1.88 billion wasn’t enough for Southern Company to charge the ratepayers of Mississippi Power enough for their “clean coal” plant. “Escalating costs”: kind of like SO’s new nukes at Plant Vogtle? Southern Company CEO Fanning says “I know people will try and link those, but they are not at all even similar.” What do you think?

Kristi Swartz wrote for the AJC 24 April 2103, Miss. power plant costs hurt Southern Co. profit,

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How can we get Georgia to move ahead in solar power?

If we can’t expect Georgia Power or Southern Company to change their tune about solar power, what can we do? Legislate and raise public pressure, while getting on with installing what solar power we can.

Maybe it’s time to pass something like HB 267 that would limit Georgia Power’s profits on that 19-month-late and $1 billion over budget nuclear boondoggle at Plant Vogtle. Instead of pouring more money down that broken concrete pit on the Savannah River, we need something like GA SB 51, The Georgia Cogeneration and Distributed Generation Act, to fix Georgia’s special solar financing problem, the antique 1973 Territorial Electric Service Act. That’s the 40-year-old antiquated law that SO CEO Thomas A. Fanning says “we need to protect”. Maybe SO does, for Fanning’s huge raises in compensation. Georgia Power and SO are not only defending that antique law, they’re preventing a Georgia Renewable Portfolio Standard (REPS) by stopping passage of bills like HB 503. Georgia Power, SO, and super-lobby ALEC systematically oppose renewable energy standards. They do this so successfully there are no REPS in Southern Company (SO)’s service territory, nor in most of SO’s surrounding “Competitive Generation Opportunities” states. One of the few exceptions is North Carolina, and a bill was introduced there to eliminate NC’s REPS.

Maybe it’s even time to do something about Georgia Power’s 11% guaranteed profit. Isn’t Georgia Power supposed to be a utility operating for the good of Georgians? Why does it get a guaranteed profit to pass on to Southern Company shareholder dividends and SO executive bonuses?

Georgia Power and even Southern Company could suddenly flip for solar power like Austin Energy did in 2003 and Cobb EMC did in 2012. But that probably won’t happen without a lot of public pressure, legal requirements by the Georgia legislature or PSC, or a shareholder revolt. So let’s start with the public pressure….

-jsq

Solar shakeout

Solar companies are shaking out just like car and computer companies before them. Dozens of automobile manufacturers shook out to a handful of major ones; Tesla is the first new one in decades. So many computer hardware and software companies went under or were bought by bigger ones that it would take a very long blog post to list them all; I could name a dozen or two off the top of my head. There’s a shakeout going on right now among mobile phone manufacturers: even mighty Nokia is sinking. The solar industry is going through that same normal shakeout phase. Will electric utilities be next?

Stephen Lacey wrote for greentechsolar 23 April 2013, Four Must-See Charts on the Future of the Global Solar Market: Who will be left standing when the dust settles?

In 2009, after Spain’s market collapsed and the world faced a crippling financial crisis, GTM Research predicted a shake-out in the manufacturing sector. But unexpected growth in global demand, particularly in European markets, helped keep many producers afloat.

Then, in 2010 and 2011, we saw a surge of new manufacturing capacity — much of it driven by China — that created the structural oversupply faced by the industry today. As illustrated by the growing list of deceased solar companies and acquisitions, the delayed shake-out in the industry is now well underway.

This morning at the GTM Solar Summit, Shayle Kann, vice president of research, shared his outlook on consolidation, module prices, and the shifting global demand through 2016. Here are four charts from his presentation that provide a glimpse of what the world may look like in the next three years.

In 2010, when the period of irrational growth began in solar manufacturing, there were 357 active module producers.

By the end of this year, that number will be down to 145. And in 2016, it will drop below 100. (So if you’re at a conference talking to a person involved in manufacturing, there’s a good chance he or she might be out of a job or working for a different firm the next time you see them.)

He then predicts that solar PV panel prices may actually rise briefly due to fewer manufacturers. However, as he notes, demand will keep going up. And demand combined with economies of scale may make prices continue down with Moore’s Law. I think his installed capacity graph is way too conservative, because he doesn’t go back far enough, which would reveal that 2010 growth is not an anomaly, it’s a steady continuation of the previous decade (well, except in Georgia). We shall see what happens in the next few years.

One thing’s for certain: a few bankruptcies are not a problem for the world’s fastest-growing industry. They are merely a symptom of any industry growing that fast. Solar panels will continue to spread, ever-faster, and electric utilities need to adapt or soon their big utility shakeout will start, too. The utility shakeout may look more like an increase in companies, as many solar installers and vendors move in to handle distributed solar power if the incumbents won’t do it. That’s my speculation, and again we’ll see.

-jsq