Category Archives: Georgia Power

Solar price drops setting invisible price limit for ever-dirtier fossil fuel extraction

A fairly insightful piece on the how oil price rises drive more fossil fuel production, currently fueled by debt because wages of most workers have been falling, still misses two big points: solar prices continually plumetting now undercut all fossil fuel prices, and dirtier fossil fuel extraction and its massive colonial invasion of pipelines are meeting resistance everywhere, including at the regulatory-captured puppet agencies like FERC.

“Tyler Durden”, ZeroHedge, 13 May 2016, Submitted by Gail Tverberg via Our Finite World blog, The Real Oil Limits Story – What Other Researchers Missed, Continue reading →

Southern Company Annual Meeting @ SO 2016-05-25

Road trip to Callaway Gardens for the annual question time with Tom Fanning, questions provided by environmentalists and Southern Company (SO) stockholders from at least four states.

Energy Mix This figure from page ii of the meeting Notice illustrates both the problem and the solution for Southern Company. Natural gas has replaced coal as SO’s top energy source, and Nuclear is still in there. But renewables are up to 4%. And over on the right of the same page:

  • Growth in Renewables
    Approximately 3,800 megawatts of announced or added renewable capacity since 2012. This includes the development of what is expected to be the largest voluntary solar portfolio in the U.S. (at Georgia Power Company).

Interesting use of “voluntary”, but never mind that. If SO keeps that up, it will Continue reading →

Wind and Solar are winning by 2 to 1 over gas and coal

Guess what’s really inevitable, pipeline companies? Solar and wind power.

Utility scare tactics that no coal means pipelines are so much hot air. Scare tactics that no pipelines would mean LNG trains are burnt up by solar power. Stop pipelnes or fracking and stop the other and LNG export along with it. And we’re winning!

Tom Randall, Bloomberg, 6 April 2016, Wind and Solar Are Crushing Fossil Fuels: Record clean energy investment outpaces gas and coal 2 to 1. Continue reading →

Southern Co. gets serious about smart grid: buys PowerSecure

While FPL wastes $3 billion on the 20th century Sabal Trail fracked methane pipeline, Southern Company (SO) shows it’s serious about distributed energy by buying distributed grid infrastructure company PowerSecure (POWR) for $431 million. That announcement not only bumped POWR stock up by about 75%, the same day (yesterday) smart grid company EnerNOC (ENOC) shares went up 20%. That last could be coincidental, since ENOC announced earnings. But with two smart grid companies going up, the renewable solar and wind energy future is coming closer.

PRNewswire, 24 February 2016, Southern Company to Acquire PowerSecure International, Inc.: Addition of PowerSecure’s proven expertise positions Southern Company to advance distributed infrastructure development, Continue reading →

Georgia Power studying wind off Tybee Island, GA

Instead of even considering oil drilling off the Atlantic coast, which is massively opposed by coastal communities, how about get on with offshore wind turbines? They’re no harder to build than deep-sea oil rigs, and if a hurricane blows them over, they don’t leak oil, like BP did into the Gulf, which will never be cleaned up, anymore than the Exxon Valdes disaster in Alaska. Japan is already doing it, in waters with typhoons just as strong as Atlantic hurricanes. Wind is clean, just what we need!

Cory Dickstein, SavannahNow, 20 June 2014, Georgia Power studying possible wind turbines, Georgia’s Coast, or Tybee’s shore, Continue reading →

Kings Bay Submarine Base Solar Groundbreaking Tomorrow

Yay Georgia Power! With Gulf Power in Florida and following along. How long until even FPL flips from fossil fuels to the sun?

Kevin McCaney, 25 August 2015, Navy makes largest federal purchase of solar power,

Fourteen Navy installations in California will get as much as a third of their power from solar energy, following the Navy’s agreement to make the largest purchase of renewable energy of any federal entity, an agreement that calls for the construction of a 210-megawatt direct-current solar facility….

With the Mesquite project, last month’s groundbreaking on a 17-megawatt project at Camp Lejeune, N.C., and an upcoming groundbreaking on a 42-megawatt project at Kings Bay, Ga., the Navy is on track to have 1.2 gigawatts of solar power….

A usually reliable source says groundbreaking is tomorrow for Kings Bay Solar.

-jsq

Videos: Development Authority’s BRAT @ VLCIA 2015-06-16

They meet again tonight with a bylaw amendment scheduled, which is probably for extending officer terms to two years as Roy Copeland proposed. (He first suggested that at least several years ago when he was re-elected Chairman.) And their nominating committee nominated the same officers again.

Lots of dials showing targets and where they are in reaching them, which is good, because I keep getting questions about what they’re doing with all that tax money and are they doing enough to justify it.

One citizen asked about the airport and another (OK, me) handed out Alapaha River Water Trail brochures and once again suggested solar panels at the airport to turn that otherwise-unusable space into profit.

Here’s the agenda and below are LAKE videos, followed by a playlist. Continue reading →

Navy beats Army with 42 MW solar farm at Kings Bay

Is this sub base solar farm bigger than the 30 MW ones Georgia Power is building at three Army bases in Georgia? Actually that’s 42 MW DC in and 30 MW AC out, so the same as the Army bases.

Navy Chief of Information Office, 13 July 2015, Navy and Georgia Power Ink Deal to Build 42 MW Solar Farm at SUBASE Kings Bay,

WASHINGTON, D.C. (NNS) — The Department of the Navy (DON) announced today a signed real estate outgrant with Georgia Power, a subsidiary of Southern Company, to develop a large-scale, solar generation farm at Naval Submarine Base (SUBASE) Kings Bay.

The 42 megawatt (MW) direct current (DC) facility will be constructed on Continue reading →

Hospitals most likely to deploy microgrids: SGMC next to VSU?

According to a thesis at Georgia Southern, hospitals are the most likely 300x143 States, in A Technical and Economic Feasibility Study of Implementing a Microgrid at Georgia Southern University, by Matthew S. Purser, 1 March 2014 industry to form microgrids, and it’s not just New York State doing microgrids; even Alabama has one. South Georgia Medical Center plus VSU seems like a good microgrid opportunity. Put solar panels on the roofs, buy some Tesla Powerwalls for backup, experiment with some wind…. Maybe the Valdosta-Lowndes Development Authority could help. And use the electricity bill money saved to fund public transportation!

Matthew S. Purser, Georgia Southern, Spring 2014, A Technical and Economic Feasibility Study of Implementing a Microgrid at Georgia Southern University. Continue reading →

Georgia Power starts selling rooftop solar tomorrow

For most of June, Georgia Power has had two ads rotating on the 300x225 Sunlight from Georgia Power, in Giving you the power to go solar, by Gretchen Quarterman, 10 June 2015 five LED billboards in Valdosta, saying

Giving you the power to go solar —Georgia Power

When? Tomorrow, July 1st, as Southern Company CEO Tom Fanning said at the SO Stockholder meeting 27 May 2015. Why then? Because that’s when HB 57, aka the Solar Power Free-Market Financing Act of 2015, goes into effect. As Tom Fanning has made his mantra since that meeting:

“If somebody wants to buy distributed generation, I want to sell it to ’em,”

Herman K. Trabish, Utility Dive, 11 June 2015 Inside Georgia Power’s move into the residential solar market: The utility says it will offer solar through an unregulated business, but installers fear possible anticompetitive impacts, Continue reading →