Category Archives: History

Solar could burn utility business model

Exhibit 2 Utilities say that like it’s a bad thing. The same utilities that left millions without power in the U.S. repeatedly last year, and that gouge ratepayers for 10% or more profits. Moore’s Law continues to drive solar costs down and installations up, with increasingly more each like compound interest. Utilties need to adapt or get out of the way.

Last November Moody’s reported that solar and wind were eroding credit for coal and gas power plants, and were already having ‘a profound negative impact’ on the competitiveness of thermal generation companies. That was in Europe. David Roberts wrote for Grist yesterday, Solar panels could destroy U.S. utilities, according to U.S. utilities,

The thing to remember is that it is in a utility’s financial interest to generate (or buy) and deliver as much power as possible. The higher the demand, the higher the investments, the higher the utility shareholder profits. In short, all things being equal, utilities want to sell more power. (All things are occasionally not equal, but we’ll leave those complications aside for now.)

And they want to produce that power from big baseload power stations for their economy of scale while the monopoly power utilities get guaranteed profits, not to mention huge ratepayer and loan-guaranteed boondoggles like the new nukes at Plant Vogtle. (Electric Member Cooperatives are somewhat different.)

Now, into this cozy business model enters cheap distributed solar PV, which eats away at it like acid.

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Banks as slumlord renters reducing property values

Lou Raguse write for WIVB.com 4 April 2013, Cheektowaga picks fight with big banks,

CHEEKTOWAGA, N.Y. (WIVB)—Neighbors in Cheektowaga say empty houses are ruining the value of their neighborhoods and bringing in unwanted guests.

Residents want to know why these properties, seized by banking giants, have been left to crumble. The town board says they have serious issues with the homeowners.

“In normal life, you would call them slumlords,” says Town Board Member Charlie Markel.

Those so-called “slumlords” are big banks like Bank of America and Chase. Markel says in too many cases, a homeowner falls behind on a mortgage and the bank begins to foreclose. But then, it stops short. He says the bank continues paying property tax but allows the homes to fall into disrepair, never allowing them back on the market for sale, or to be auctioned.

Let’s remember what last year’s study of America’s richest and poorest cities found about the Valdosta MSA:

Despite these positives, 14.4 percent of housing units were vacant last year [2011], higher than the national vacancy rate of 13.1 percent.

I wonder how big national and multinational banks are serving our area? And with a vacancy rate that high, and housing prices still dropping, why are we building more houses?

-jsq

NJ 1 GW Solar: GA #22

While Georgia failed to reform its antique Territorial Electric Service Act and toyed with a solar monopoly, New Jersey, far to the north with far less sun, finished installing a gigawatt (1,000 megawatts) of solar power. The rest of the U.S. installed 3.3 MW total, slightly higher than projections of 3.2 MW, but Georgia lagged behind. When will the legislature and the Public Service Commission, and perhaps more importantly, Georgia Power and Southern Company, stop stop wasting our money on that three-legged nuclear regulatory-capture boondoggle at Plant Vogtle and get on with solar in Georgia for jobs, for profit, and for clean air and water?

Pete Danko wrote for Earth Techling and Huffpo 20 March 2013, New Jersey Solar Capacity Hits 1 Gigawatt,

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U.S. installed 3.3 Gigawatts of solar in 2012, on target

Moore’s law continues to drive solar costs down and installations up. According to SEIA, U.S. Market Installs 3,300 Megawatts in 2012; Driven by Record Fourth Quarter,

2012 was a historic year for the U.S. solar industry. There were 3,313 megawatts (MW) of photovoltaic (PV) capacity installed throughout the year, which represents 76% growth over 2011’s record deployment totals. The fourth quarter of 2012 was also the largest quarter on record as 1,300 MW came online, driven in part by unprecedented installation levels in the residential and utility markets. SEIA and GTM Research forecast that the market will continue to grow at a steady clip with over 4,200 MW of PV and 940 MW of concentrating solar power (CSP) expected to come online in 2013. (All data from SEIA/GTM Research “U.S. Solar Market Insight 2012 Year-In-Review” unless otherwise noted.)

And those new installations are driven by solar PV prices continually falling in Moore’s Law for solar:

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Renewable Portfolio Standards: GA, NC, and ALEC

Renewable Energy Portfolio Standards (RPS) are being proposed in Georgia and ALEC is trying to do away with them in North Carolina. If ALEC doesn’t like them, there must be something good about RPS. Let’s get on with real renewable energy in Georgia.

In Georgia, HB 503, sponsored by Karla Drenner, Carol Fullerton, Debbie Buckner, Scott Holcomb, Spencer Frye, and Earnest Smith, would create a Renewable Energy Credits Trading program as part of renewable portfolio standards, as Kyle wrote for Spencer Frye’s blog 10 March 2013, Let the Sunshine In. Unfortunately, HB 503 includes biomass as a renewable energy source. Maybe they just mean landfill gas, which I consider a special case since it’s being produced anyway, and since methane is worse as a greenhouse gas than CO2, burning landfill gas makes some sense. Nope, in the actual bill, 46-3-71 (1):

‘Biomass material’ means organic matter, excluding fossil fuels and black liquor, including agricultural crops, plants, trees, wood, wood wastes and residues, sawmill waste, sawdust, wood chips, bark chips, and forest thinning, harvesting, or clearing residues; wood waste from pallets or other wood demolition debris; peanut shells; cotton plants; corn stalks; and plant matter, including aquatic plants, grasses, stalks, vegetation, and residues, including hulls, shells, or cellulose containing fibers

The barn door in there is “harvesting”, which can mean whole trees, but the rest isn’t much better. We don’t need to be burning things that increase atmospheric CO2 and end up stripping our forests. In North Carolina they staretd with just tops and limbs and then tried to escalate to whole trees. We already fought off the biomass boondoggle here in south Georgia; let’s not have it encouraged statewide. Especially when we have better solutions: solar and wind power. HB 503 isn’t going to get passed this year, since it didn’t make crossover day, so maybe its sponsors can clean up that biomass mess before they submit it again.

Speaking of North Carolina, Continue reading →

South Ga. officials expecting sinkholes after rain while NYTimes plays down the risk

Sinkholes aren’t just for Florida anymore: Albany’s got them. Are sinkholes risky? You may think so if one is under your house. And here above the Floridan Aquifer you probably won’t know that until your foundations starts cracking. Maybe we should do something to prevent the problem, and to help people who are affected by it. Perhaps the Lowndes County government till pay attention when somebody’s house falls into a sinkhole.

Jim Wallace wrote for WALB 9 March 2013, Expect more sinkholes,

Some sinkholes have opened up in South Georgia since the recent heavy rains.

And engineers and public works experts say they expect more sinkholes to develop in the coming weeks. It’s just nature at work, but it can really cause some problems.

Really? Does “nature at work” include sinkholes predictably forming after massive water pumping to sprinkle strawberries during a cold snap?

The WALB story pooh-poohs the possibility of anything like that Sefner sinkhole showing up in south Georgia, and then details two Albany sinkholes:

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Suwannee County sinkholes —WCTV

Sinkholes in Seffner, Fort Myers, Tallahassee, and now even closer. Follow the Withlacoochee River south to the Suwannee River, and two counties south of us in Suwannee County, Florida, they’ve got dozens of sinkholes, one of them massive, with another one this month, including apparently a cavern under some yards. This is in the same Floridan Aquifer that underlies Lowndes County, where we had a road drop into a sinkhole three years ago and sinkholes were discovered under a man’s garage and yard last year.

Greg Gullberg 4 March 2013, The Science Behind Sinkholes,

Mikell Cook says he and his neighbors have learned more about Geology than they ever cared to since last summer when Tropical Storm Debby swept through much of Florida leaving Live Oak and surrounding areas peppered with sinkholes.

He and his neighbors live in the town of McAlpin, where

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Tallahassee sinkhole

Even closer than Tampa Bay or Fort Myers, Tallahassee has sinkhole problems in our same Floridan Aquifer just across the state line. Will the Lowndes County Commission do anything about our sinkhole problems before people start losing their insurance and get sucked into holes in the ground?

Andy Alcock wrote for WCTV Wednesday, Tallahassee Woman Faces Sinkhole Problem,

Imagine living in a home you can’t insure, no one wants to buy and it may not be safe.

A Tallahassee woman is currently facing that problem.

At first glance, her home in Tallahassee’s Mission Manor neighborhood on the city’s northwest side doesn’t look much different from any of the other homes in the neighborhood.

Then about two years ago, homeowner Vickie Gordon found a problem.

“I started noticing that the doors were getting stuck in the bathroom, couldn’t open them,” said Gordon.

Then the issues became more noticeable.

Cracks started showing up all over the house.

After Gordon contacted her insurance company, investigators found sinkhole activity at her home.

I wish this part was a joke:

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Florida sink hole evicts church

More sinkholes in Florida in the same Floridan Aquifer that’s under us, this time evacuating a church. Maybe sinkhole safety should be important here, too.

WCTV carried an AP story today, Suspected Sinkhole Forces Church Move

Pastor Rick Shuck told WBBH in Fort Myers on Monday the sinkhole has caused uneven floors, cracks in the walls and a hole in the ground so large that a landscaper fell into it.

Shuck says they had to end Faith Community Church’s Sunday service early because “it’s just not safe anymore.” He says some cracks in the walls are a half-inch wide and part of the auditorium floor has dropped about 4 1/2 inches.

Geological engineers say it’s definitely a sinkhole. But the church’s insurance company sent engineers who determined there is no problem. So next month the two sides are heading to mediation.

That second picture above was taken in Lowndes County, showing printouts of analysis by a VSU professor of sinkholes under a yard in Lowndes County. And they’re under Michael McCormick’s shed (see picture on the right), and they’re in his garage.

The same Floridan Aquifer is underground here as in Florida. Perhaps something needs to be done about sinkholes right here in Lowndes County?

-jsq

Videos: Solar Dublin High School groundbreaking @ DHS Solar 2013-03-11

Breaking ground Groundbreaking for solar power to save Dublin High 40%, thus reducing teacher furloughs, financed by municipal bonds, made possible by cooperation among a wide range of government officials, private companies, and individuals: that was the groundbreaking story in Dublin, Laurens County, yesterday, videod by Gretchen Quarterman for LAKE.

Dublin City Schools are willing to try something new, and that’s why they were groundbreaking, said Chuck Ledbetter, Superintendent, yesterday. He recognized members present of the Dublin City Council, the Laurens County Commission, the Dublin-Laurens Development Authority, and state representative Matt Hatchett, and Public Service Commissioner Bubba McDonald. Ledbetter’s theme,

News camera and speaker Everybody worked together to make this happen.

was echoed over and over by many other speakers. What they worked for was economic help for Dublin City Schools through solar power, financed by municipal bonds.

The Mayor of Dublin, Phil Best added to the list Continue reading →