Southern California Edison bet on big baseload nuclear, and
has been out two units for eight months and counting.
Big baseload turns quickly from 24/7 to 0/7.
Tentative plans are forming for a restart, which will take
many more months, if ever.
Wouldn’t distributed solar and wind be quicker and smarter?
In Georgia, as well as California?
The company announced plans to repair and restart one of two damaged
reactors, Unit 2, at reduced power to hopefully halt vibration that
has caused excessive wear to scores of tubes that carry radioactive
water. The outlook for its heavily damaged sister, Unit 3, appears
grim and no decision on its future is expected until at least next
summer.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is expected to take months to
review the plan, and there is no timetable to restart the plant.
There are a few signs that the eventual outcome is dawning on some utility people.
Plans are already taking shape that envision lower output from San
Onofre at least into 2013.
“Whenever you lose generation, it has implications,” said San Diego
Gas & Electric spokeswoman Jennifer Ramp.
Well, yeah, and losing big blocks of power is one of the implications
of depending on a few big baseload plants in the first place.
Distributed
solar
and
wind wouldn’t have this problem.
“Renewable (energy sources are) going to have a sliver,”
Bowers said of fuels to create electricity. “Is it going to be
2 or 4 percent? That’s yet to be determined. Economics will drive
that. But you always remember (that renewable energy is) an
intermittent resource. It’s not one you can depend on 100 percent of
the time.”
One time you can depend on it is hot summer days when everybody is
air conditioning, which is why
Austin Energy flipped in one year
from spouting such nonsense to deploying the most aggressive solar rooftop
rebate program in the country.
Austin Energy did the math and found those rebates would cost
about the same as a coal plant and would generate as much energy.
And when it is needed most, unlike the fossilized baseload grid,
which
left millions without power in the U.S. in June
and
hundreds of millions without power in India in July.
Two professors in India have done the math and found that
there’s plenty of available land in India (much of it on rooftops)
to power its billion people on solar energy alone.
And solar uses less water than nuclear or coal, also as we already knew for the U.S.
According to their study, 4.1 per cent of the total uncultivable and
waste land area in India is enough to meet the projected annual
demand of 3,400 terawatt-hour (TWh) by 2070 by solar energy alone (1
terawatt-hour per year equals 114 megawatts). The land area required
will be further reduced to 3.1 per cent “if we bring the other
potential renewable energy sources of India into picture”,
they claim. They conclude that land availability is not a limiting
constraint for the solar source as believed. According to their
study, 4.1 per cent of the total uncultivable and waste land area in
India is enough to meet the projected annual demand of 3,400
terawatt-hour (TWh) by 2070 by solar energy alone (1 terawatt-hour
per year equals 114 megawatts). The land area required will be
further reduced to 3.1 per cent “if we bring the other
potential renewable energy sources of India into picture”,
they claim. They conclude that land availability is not a limiting
constraint for the solar source as believed.
The graph above shows land occupation needed to generate 1 gigawatt hour (1GWh)
for each of coal, nuclear, hydroelectric, and solar.
It is Figure 3 from the actual study,
Is land really a constraint for the utilitzation of solar energy in India?
by H. Mitavachan and J. Srinivasan, Current Science, Vol. 103, No. 2, pp. 163-168, 25 July 2012.
More from the Hindu article, with graphs from the journal article:
A captive Public Service Commission that
rubber-stamps costs for Plant Vogtle.
In case there was any doubt as to the PSC’s role in legitimizing those new nukes,
the very next day Fitch reaffirmed Southern Company’s bond ratings.
Southern Company’s regulated utility subsidiaries derive predictable
cash flows from low-risk utility businesses, enjoy relatively
favorable regulatory framework in their service territories, and
exhibit limited commodity price risks due to the ability to recover
fuel and purchased power through separate cost trackers.
To get a decent deal on streetlights, a small Georgia city may have
to help change the Georgia Public Service Commission.
Or, an energy concern in Hahira happened to coincide with
a visit by PSC candidate Steve Oppenheimer.
Ralph Clendenin, City Council member, is looking into converting
Hahira's streetlights to LEDs or maybe solar.
He has discussed that with Georgia Power, which will do it for
$250,000 up front.
At a savings of $1,000 a month, that would take quite a while to pay back:
more than 20 years.
Just like you're looking at options the city might do for better choices for lighting
in terms of serving the people and meeting your budget, as Georgians we need that, too.
He indicated that there are more solutions than we're being told.
To me what's improtant are homeowners rights,
and we get control over the power rates,
because our residential rates and small business rates have gone up about 31% in five years.
What it comes down to is people like you in this room in the small communities
figuring out what pieces do we put together to make our community better for tomorrow.
Afterwards in the entranceway,
Ralph Clendenin showed Steve Oppenheimer how
he'd figured out that Georgia Power was charging about 73% maintenance
above the electricity cost of the streetlights.
Oppenheimer said there were many options.
Clendenin suggested one:
The option I see right now is, the Commission somehow, has got to change the rules
on how Georgia Power… structures payments.
Oppenheimer suggested a way to get there:
We need a commission with some new leadership,
with some separation from industry, that doesn't have the
apparent conflicts of interest.
Ralph summed it up pithily:
Ralph Clendenin: 73% is that forever payment to Georgia Power.
Steve Oppenheimer: It's a great deal, if you're on the right end of it.
[laughter]
What say we change the end of the stick we the taxpayers are getting from the PSC?
Work Session, Hahira City Council, Hahira, Lowndes County, Georgia, 1 October 2012.
Videos by John S. Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE).
This week, Moyers & Company (check local listings) presents
“United States of ALEC,” a report on the most
influential corporate-funded political force most of America has
never heard of — ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange
Council. A national consortium of state politicians and powerful
corporations, ALEC presents itself as a “nonpartisan
public-private partnership”. But behind that mantra lies a
vast network of corporate lobbying and political action aimed to
increase corporate profits at public expense without public
knowledge.
If you’re quick, you may be able to sell solar from your roof
to Georgia Power.
If the PSC approves a pending request.
If you get in before that new quota gets filled.
And if you’re a Georgia Power customer.
The rest of us?
Not until the
1973 Georgia Electric Territorial Act
is changed.
Until then, Georgia will continue to lag way behind New Jersey in solar power.
Georgia Power filed Wednesday seeking permission from state
regulators to more than triple the amount of solar power it uses to
generate electricity for its 2.4 million customers by swapping it
for what was already planned from other renewable sources.
What “other renewable sources”?
The Georgia Power plan won’t affect rates because it is based on
paying the solar providers what it would have paid the biomass
provider, 13 cents per kilowatt hour, which is already figured into
customer’s rates.
OK, that’s good, because it means biomass is well and truly
dead in Georgia.
But it also means Georgia Power isn’t very serious about solar,
if all it’s doing is fiddling with accounting for the small amount
of power biomass might have produced and not going for the real
numbers solar can produce.
OK, how many solar megawatts?
Awarded more than $1.3 billion to conduct more than $3.8 billion of research and development.
Qualified for $412 million of investment tax credits for a 21st century coal plant being built in Mississippi.
OK, SO, let's see you do the study to show what we can really do with
conservation, efficiency, wind, sun, and less natural gas than we have now.
Sure, in the Georgia Bight we do have to contend with hurricanes.
But a
"great, big company"
like SO should be able to focus its vaunted private R&D on that problem and solve it.
Maybe SO doesn't want to do that because the result might show there is no need for
any coal plants, nor new natural gas plants, nor any nuclear plants, which would mean
Georgia Power would have to give up its nuclear-funding rate-hike stealth tax
and SO would have to give up its $8.3 billion loan guarantee.
Hey, we might even need to
change the 1973 Georgia Electric Territorial Act,
and that might damage Georgia Power's guaranteed profit!
Nevermind that Georgia Power and SO might make more profit if they got out
in front on solar and wind power and a smart grid.
A new analysis by Stanford researchers reveals that there is enough
offshore wind along the U.S. East Coast to meet the electricity
demands of at least one-third of the country.
The scientists paid special attention to the Maine-to-Virginia
corridor; the historical lack of strong hurricanes in the region
makes it a favorable site for offshore wind turbines. They found
that turbines placed there could satisfy the peak-time power needs
of these states for three seasons of the year (summer is the
exception).
“We knew there was a lot of wind out there, but this is the first
actual quantification of the total resource and the time of day that
the resource peaks,” said Mark Z. Jacobson, a professor of civil and
environmental engineering at Stanford who directed the research.
“This provides practical information to wind farm developers about
the best areas to place turbines.”
In the medium term, the value of conventional gas is in providing
reliable baseload power to supplement unpredictable renewables,
which depend on the sun shining or the wind blowing.
Danish state-owned utility
DONG Energy, which has relied heavily on
coal-fired power generation, sees a combination of gas and
renewables as the way to go.
“We see gas-to-power and wind energy as the ideal mix, together
comprising clean and stable energy. Wind energy as the clean energy
source, and gas-to-power as the balancing power,” Carsten Krogsgaard
Thomsen, DONG Energy’s acting CEO, said.
reactors, Unit 2, at reduced power to hopefully halt vibration that has caused excessive wear to scores of tubes that carry radioactive water. The outlook for its heavily damaged sister, Unit 3, appears grim and no decision on its future is expected until at least next summer.
The
