According to Ted Terry,
We are the first PSC campaign in over a decade to go up on the broadcast airwaves!
Here’s the video:
About those rate hikes: Georgia Power hikes prices for gas and nuclear, then complains about solar and We can charge you even if it’s cancelled! —CWIPped Georgia Power
Steve Oppenheimer is on the record as wanting more energy efficiency and renewable energy (including solar energy).
-jsq
Here’s a single video of this morning’s entire Lowndes County Commission Work Session. The railroad item was neither of the ones on which I was speculating. The animal shelter wants a 24 hour “cooling-off period” with a submitted animal kept at home before “evaluation” by the shelter. The Tax Commissioner wants to refund some taxes they apparently accidentally overcharged. The Fire Chief has bids for equipment for the new fire truck. And there’s going to be an animal health fair. They vote tomorrow evening at 5PM.
Here’s the video, followed by the agenda, with links to the relevant parts of the video, and a few notes.
Video of 6 minute meeting
Work Session, Lowndes County Commission (LCC),
Video by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE),
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 22 October 2012.
Thanks to Dexter Sharper for use of his video camera.
Here’s the annotated agenda:
Continue reading
An excellent article about the problems with Georgia Power’s
new nukes on the Savannah River gets at something you may not know:
they can charge you for them even if they’re cancelled!
Steve Willis wrote for the Georgia Sierran Oct./Nov./Dec. 2012 page 5, Overruns, Uncertainty Plague Vogtle Expansion,
If Southern Company abandons this project, the CWIP law not only allows Southern Company to keep all of the CWIP payments legally extorted from customers, but allows them to keep CWIP fees in place or even increase them until all their costs and profits have been fully recovered. Due to the run-away cost overruns, the CWIP charge on your monthly bill is already more than three times what Southern Company confidently claimed it would be at this time when they presented their case to “your” Georgia legislature in 2009.
And that 2009 legislature rubberstamped CWIP so it appears on your Georgia Power bill as Nuclear Construction Cost Recovery Rider. Willis reminds us that the 2 nukes already at Plant Vogtle were projected to be four nukes for $600 million and ended up being two for $9 billion.
Continue readingEveryone has heard the saying “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.” If the Vogtle expansion costs balloon, as many analysts expect, it will cost
Back in February,
Georgia Power argued that a free market in solar power would cause
price increases.
Yet they already increased prices for natural gas and
for nuclear plants that won’t produce electricity for years, if ever,
and are already massively overbudget and behind schedule.
Why should we believe them about solar when it’s their archaic projects
they already
are deploying that already have increased customer prices?
In February, Greg Roberts of Georgia Power argued,
Another reason is that the customers of Georgia Power, Georgia’s
EMC’s and Municipal Electric Authority of Georgia are paying for the poles and wires to transmit power, and the back-up generation to cover the electricity needs when the sun isn’t shining. These costs will have to be recovered from other customers not getting the privileged deal from the developer, raising everyone else’s rates.
While there are already numerous federal and state tax and other incentives for solar development in Georgia, it is still much more costly than the service provided by utilities. But what if third-party solar developers could get other electric customers in Georgia to foot the bill? That would be the result of this legislation.
It’s like asking Sally’s Café to pay the electric bill of Joe’s Cafe across the street, thus allowing Joe to undercut Sally’s prices.
Georgia Power well knows they could take a percentage of any power transmitted through their lines, so that wires and poles and backup generation argument is ludicrous. And as far as subsidies, how about this one, Georgia Power, Get the Facts, Investing in Georgia’s Energy Future:
Continue readingFive minutes? Or will they discuss any of the four items on the agenda for Monday morning’s Work Session?
What’s the CSX project?
Is it this item from
the T-SPLOST constrained project list?
RC11-000071 Construction of St Augustine Road Overpass
That overpass went from $12,000,000 to $14,627,933.04 during the T-SPLOST selection process. On the ground down there on St. Augustine Road it sure looks like people are preparing for an overpass. Has the county found some non-T-SPLOST way to fund that railroad overpass?
Since it’s CSX, I’d guess it’s not this other T-SPLOST project:
RC11-000077 Georgia and Florida Railway (GFRR) — Valdosta to Willacoochee Rehabilitation
The Commission could just post the proposed agreement along with the agenda, and then we’d all know.
LOWNDES COUNTY BOARD OF COMMISSIONERSContinue reading
PROPOSED AGENDA
WORK SESSION, MONDAY, OCTOBER 22, 2012, 8:30 a.m.
REGULAR SESSION, TUESDAY, OCTOBER 23, 2012, 5:30 p.m.
327 N. Ashley Street — 2nd Floor
SPLOST VII’s $22 million for a new library and parks and rec goes about 2/3 for the library and 1/3 for parks and rec, and the latter doesn’t all go to parks and rec at Five Points, according to a mysterious red-letter note that has sprung up on the Lowndes County website.
The front page of lowndescounty.com has sprouted this undated and unsigned clarification under the SPLOST VII heading:
Exhibit A (Please note that the $22 million proposed by Lowndes County for the Library and Parks & Recreation, represents a division of approximately $14.5 million for the Library and approximately $7.5 million for Parks & Recreation. In addition, the $7.5 million proposed for Parks & Recreation is not allocated for parks and improvements at the 5-Points site. Parks & Recreation will use these funds for improvements in other areas of the county.)
Exhibit A is the list of projects and estimated costs that includes this item:
- payment of bond debt for acquisition and construction of and equipping a new library facility and parks and recreation facilities
$ 22,000,000
Can somebody explain why the new library and Parks and Rec were lumped together in the first place? At least the county is sort of trying to explain the difference now.
They didn’t include the pie chart with their clarification.
I made the pie chart; took about Continue reading
David A. Staples
running for the Georgia Public Service Commission for District 5,
talked about the ethical conflicts of the incumbents who take
almost all of their campaign contributions from people associated
with the utilities they regulate.
Then he mentioned that the new nuclear reactors Georgia Power
is building for Southern Company at Plant Vogtle
have
another $3.5 billion in cost overruns coming.
This is after the PSC incumbents just rubberstamped the Vogtle budget in August, and on top of the $900 million in cost overruns we already knew about. That $900 million was already more than 6% of the originally-projected $14 billion total cost. If it’s now $3.5 + $0.9 = $4.4 billion, that’s more than 31% over the original total. Maybe we should vote in some PSC members and legislators who will stop this nonsense.
Here’s the video:
Continue readingValdosta #3! Followed by Albany #4! In poorest cities in the country. What can we do about that?
Michael B. Sauter, Alexander E.M. Hess and Samuel Weigley, 24/7 Wall St., wrote for NBC News 14 October 2012, America’s richest and poorest cities,
3. Valdosta, Ga.
- Median household income: $32,446
- Population: 140,599 (87th lowest)
- Unemployment rate: 9.2 percent(140th highest)
- Percent households below poverty line: 27.6 percent (ninth highest)
From 2007 to 2011, the unemployment rate in Valdosta increased by 130 percent, from 4 percent of workers to 9.2 percent. The number of employed workers declined by more than 6,000 during that time. Those jobs remaining often pay a lower salary. Last year, nearly 17 percent of the work force was employed in the generally low-paying retail industry, the sixth highest percentage of all metro areas. In 2007, just 11.3 percent of the labor force worked in retail. Valdosta, however, has an improving and active housing market. Home prices rose nearly 12 percent between 2007 and 2011. Despite these positives, 14.4 percent of housing units were vacant last year, higher than the national vacancy rate of 13.1 percent. Also, 15.3 percent of homes were worth less than $50,000 versus 8.8 percent nationwide.
The study is actually for “U.S. metropolitan statistical areas, or MSAs” and this population is not just for Valdosta, it’s for the Valdosta MSA, which includes Brooks, Echols, Lanier, and Lowndes Counties.
Look who’s next on the list:
Continue readingIf tiny Denmark, farther north than Edmonton, Alberta, has already deployed 200 MW of solar capacity, why can't Georgia Power do it? We know why: Southern Company's three-legged nuclear regulatory-capture stool is too profitable for SO and Georgia Power.
Molly Cotter wrote for Inhabitant 15 October 2012,
Denmark Hits 200 Megawatt Solar Capacity Goal 8 Years Ahead of Schedule,
Lets face it — its rare we see a government goal reached on time, let alone early. Not too long ago, the Danish Government announced an ambitious goal to reach 200 megawatts of solar capacity by 2020, and as of last week, they have already met it! The country is currently installing an average of 36 megawatts of solar panels each month. At this rate, their resulting capacity by 2020 will be over five times the original goal. Denmark's power is currently 20% supplied by renewable sources, and the nation has set a goal of sourcing 100% of its energy from renewable sources by 2050.
So Denmark has already deployed four times as much solar capacity
as GA PSC required of Georgia Power,
and almost as much solar capacity as Georgia Power has just asked GA PSC to approve.
While deploying more per month than Southern Company's largest solar farms anywhere.
Maybe it's time to elect Georgia Public Service Commissioners to represent you.
-jsq
The Georgia Public Service Commission decides how much you pay for energy.
If you’re tired of Georgia Power’s
three-legged nuclear regulatory-capture stool
and
Georgia lagging far behind other states in solar and wind energy,
or you just want
PSC members who will represent you
and who do not
accept massive campaign contributions from the utilities they regulate
or their employees or lawyers
like the incumbents do;
the incumbents who can’t even be bothered to show up for debates
or to answer questionnaires.
Here are two GA PSC challengers who did answer a questionnaire:
Democrat Steve Oppenheimer
and
Libertarian David Staples.
Early voting has already started:
you can vote for them today.
While you’re at it, you can
vote for statehouse legislators who will let the sun shine on Georgia.
-jsq