Category Archives: Solar

Entergy shutting down Vermont Yankee nuke: tenth down or never to be built in past year

As Entergy has been preparing to do for some time, it’s down forever for Vermont Yankee. That’s at least ten (10) down forever (Vermont Yankee, Kewaunee, Crystal River 3, San Onofre 2 and 3) or never to be built (Calvert Cliffs 3, South Texas Nuclear Project 3 and 4, Bellefonte, and Levy County) in the past year. How many will it take before Southern Company (or more likely GA PSC or even the Georgia legislature) realizes new nukes make no financial sense and terminates the Plant Vogtle 3 and 4 boondoggle on the Savannah River?

Entergy blamed Vermont Yankee on shale gas, but you ain’t seen nothing yet, as Moore’s Law for solar really kicks in. Next one to go: I say Entergy’s often-down Pilgrim 1 in Massachusetts; everything Entergy said about Vermont Yankee applies in spades to Pilgrim 1. Or maybe ten-times-down-this-year Palisades. Or bouncy man-killer Arkansas Nuclear One. So many to choose from!

Entergy PR on Market Watch today, Entergy to Close, Decommission Vermont Yankee –Decision driven by sustained low power prices, high cost structure and wholesale electricity market design flaws for Vermont Yankee plant –Focus to remain on safety during remaining operation and after shutdown,

NEW ORLEANS, Aug. 27, 2013 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ — Entergy Corporation ETR -0.21% today said it plans to close and decommission its Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Station in Vernon, Vt. The station is expected to cease power production after its current fuel cycle and move to safe shutdown in the fourth quarter of 2014. The station will remain under the oversight of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission throughout the decommissioning process.

“This was an agonizing decision and Continue reading →

Solar power will win like the Internet did

Remember BITNET, FidoNet, or UUCP? Nope, the Internet overtook all of those. And in 20 years that’s how young people will remember coal and natural gas plants, although the waste-disposal costs of nukes will be with us for ten thousand years. Solar power is going to overtake all other power sources within a decade. Here’s why I think that.

Jerry Grillo quoted me in Georgia Trend July 2013, Sun Dancing: As Georgia’s solar capacity shoots skyward, a new state utility is proposed,

“Solar power is the fastest-growing industry in the world, and it’s growing along in the same way the Internet did,” says John S. Quarterman, a Harvard-educated author and Internet pioneer who launched the first commercial online newsletter, among other things, and who lives in rural Lowndes County.

“Think back 20 years to 1993. How many people had heard of the Internet? And look at how far we’ve come. What I’m seeing with solar energy is the same kind of exponential growth. It’s clean energy that works, and it generates jobs.”

Here are 1992 ten-year graphs of Internet growth from that newsletter, Matrix News, using Continue reading →

AGL pipeline station in Atlanta leaking, eroding, substandard construction

Citizens are calling for GA PSC Chuck Eaton to call it off. Since apparently GA PSC does have authority over natural gas pipelines, maybe we should talk to our Commissioner H. Doug Everett about that proposed Sabal Trail natural gas pipeline through Lowndes County. Wasting resources on natural gas now is foolish when solar will overtake everything within a decade and we should be getting on with sun power for Lowndes County instead of methane for Florida.

Brookhaven Post 23 August 2013, Deteriorating conditions at AGL regulator station site has citizens calling for its removal,

An Atlanta Gas Light (AGL) regulator station that is being constructed on Parcel 36 off of Clairmont Rd., has been a project of concern for some time now. Site conditions such as trenches full of water, deteriorating banks, eroding foundations, corrosion, substandard and hazardous construction practices, and a host of other issues, have become the catalyst to amplifying an effort to have Public Service Commissioner, Chuck Eaton, intervene and ask that AGL cease construction and remove the station.

-jsq

Solar will overtake everything –FERC Chair Jon Wellinghof

“Everybody’s roof is out there,” for solar power, so natural gas or oil pipelines are a waste of time. Solar prices dropping exponentially drive solar deployment up like compound interest, eventually onto everybody’s rooftops, where eventually means in about a decade, after which we’ll be ramping down natural gas like we’re already ramping down coal. It’s time for Georgia Power and Southern Company and all of Georgia’s EMCs to get on with solar and stop wasting resources on dead ends, especially that bad idea of fifty years ago, nuclear power.

Herman K. Trabish wrote for Green Tech Media yesterday, FERC Chair Jon Wellinghoff: Solar ‘Is Going to Overtake Everything’: One of the country’s top regulators explains why he is so bullish on solar.

“Solar is growing so fast it is going to overtake everything,” Wellinghoff told GTM last week in a sideline conversation at the National Clean Energy Summit in Las Vegas.

If a single drop of water on the pitcher’s mound at Dodger Stadium is doubled every minute, Wellinghoff said, a person chained to the highest seat would be in danger of drowning in an hour.

“That’s what is happening in solar. It could double every two years,” he said.

Indeed, as GTM Research’s MJ Shiao recently pointed out, in the next 2 1/2 years the U.S. will Continue reading →

Japanese solar grid

After Fukushima, Japan is now serious about solar power. From Miyama, Fukuoka (pictured), in the south of Honshu to northerly Hokkaido, Japan is building solar power plants, and now needs to upgrade its grid. Rooftop solar doesn’t need as many grid changes, since it delivers onsite at peak load. Hey, here’s an idea: solar panels on unused industrial park areas!

Yvonne Chang wrote for National Geographic 14 August 2013, Japan Solar Energy Soars, But Grid Needs to Catch Up,


Japan’s renewable energy incentive law has spurred construction of so many photovoltaic farms like this one, in Miyama, that the nation is expected to be the world’s leading solar energy market this year. But Japan must upgrade its system for delivering electricity.
Photograph from Asahi Shimbun/Getty Images
A new renewable energy incentive program has Japan on track to become the world’s leading market for solar energy, leaping past China and Germany, with Hokkaido at the forefront of the sun power rush. In a densely populated nation hungry for alternative energy, Hokkaido is an obvious choice to host projects, because of the availability of relatively large patches of inexpensive land. Unused industrial park areas, idle land inside a motor race circuit, a former horse ranch—all are being converted to solar farms. (See related, ” Pictures: A New Hub for Solar Tech Blooms in Japan .”)

But there’s a problem with this boom in Japan’s north. Although one-quarter of the largest solar projects approved under Japan’s new renewables policy are located in Hokkaido, the island accounts for less than 3 percent of the nation’s electricity demand. Experts say Japan will need to act quickly to make sure the power generated in Hokkaido flows to where it is needed. And that means modernizing a grid that currently doesn’t have capacity for all the projects proposed, installing a giant battery—planned to be the world’s largest—to store power when the sun isn’t shining, and ensuring connections so power can flow across the island nation. (See related, ” In Japan, Solar Panels Aid in Tsunami Rebuilding .”)

Turning to Renewables

Japan historically has had no fossil energy sources of its own; it powered much of its economic growth over the past few generations with homegrown nuclear energy. At the start of 2011, more than 50 reactors provided Japan with 30 percent of its electricity, and the plan was to increase that share to 50 percent. That scenario was upended on March 11, 2011, when the most powerful earthquake ever to shake Japan touched off a tsunami that breached the defenses of Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant on the east coast. (See related, ” One Year After Fukushima, Japan Faces Shortages of Energy, Trust .”)

The second-worst Continue reading →

PR and Marketing materials, ads, and trips @ VLCIA 2013-08-20

One hopes all this PR and marketing pays off in jobs. Remember, the Industrial Authority has kept its cushy 1 mil of property tax throughout the economic downturn. Four new industry projects are on the agenda this time, plus more solar power at Valdosta’s Mud Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant. Much better PR than Valdosta Fire Dept. helping put out Perma-Fix on fire.

Here’s the agenda in a slightly broken PDF on the VLCIA website and extracted below.

Continue reading →

Climate change adversely affecting U.S. power grid

Yes, and moving away from baseload coal, nukes, and natural gas and towards distributed solar and wind power will help with that, both directly by making the grid more resilient, and indirectly by slowing climate change.

Clare Foran wrote for NationalJournal 12 August 2013, Climate Change Is Threatening the Power Grid: So says the White House, in a new report that recommends strengthening the grid.

Just days away from the 10-year anniversary of the worst power outage in U.S. history, the White House and the Energy Department released a report on Monday evaluating the resiliency of the nation’s electric grid and recommending steps to prevent future blackouts.

The report called storms and severe weather “the leading cause of power outages in the United States,” and warned against the steep cost of weather-related damage to the electric grid. It put the price tag for electrical failures caused by inclement weather at between $18 billion and $33 billion annually, and noted that costs have increased in recent years, jumping from a range of $14 billion to $26 billion in 2003 to $27 billion to $52 billion in 2012. Storms exceeding a billion dollars in damages (electrical and otherwise) have also become more frequent in the past decade, as the chart below shows.

Well, Entergy’s Arkansas Nuclear 1 (ANO1) is still down more than four months after a fatal accident (hey, look at that; Continue reading →

New nukes make no financial sense –financial expert to GA PSC

If new nukes make no sense because of natural gas prices, they make even less sense with continually-dropping solar power prices.

Ray Henry wrote for AP yesterday, Regulator: New nuke plant now wouldn’t make sense,

If Georgia was starting from scratch, it would not build a nuclear power plant….

An analyst working for state regulators, Philip Hayet, said in written testimony that the total costs of building two more nuclear reactors at Plant Vogtle (VOH’-gohl) is more expensive than the next-best option, constructing natural gas plants.

Still, Hayet said it is cheaper in most scenarios to finish the nuclear plant rather than halt the project and instead build natural gas plants.

But it’s not cheaper to finish a nuke than to halt it and get on with wind offshore and distributed solar power throughout Georgia.

GA PSC didn’t publish Hayet’s calculations, using the old excuse of “they involve proprietary financial information from Southern Co. subsidiary Georgia Power”. But Edison Electric Institute didn’t need any proprietary financial information to compute that Continue reading →

EDF exits nuclear, focuses on solar and wind

EDF is moving to solar and wind, despite its excuse of shale gas for leaving the U.S. nuclear market. EDF already has almost twice as much solar and wind in the U.S., 2.3 gigawatts, as the 1.2 gigawatts Southern Company plans by 2016. Maybe this means Calvert Cliffs is finally dead maybe along with NRC’s attempt to change foreign ownership rules to accomodate EDF. EDF is the operator of France’s fleet of nuclear reactors, including caught-on-fire Cattenom and many others that drain over-hot water into French rivers in the summer.

Reuters in Climate Spectator 31 July 2013 EDF exits US nuclear, focuses on renewables,

French utility EDF, the world’s biggest operator of nuclear plants, is pulling out of nuclear energy in the United States, bowing to the realities of a market that has been transformed by cheap shale gas.

Several nuclear reactors in the US have been closed or are being shuttered as utilities baulk at the big investments needed to extend their lifetimes Continue reading →

The Economist answers Paul Bowers about carbon tax

Back in May someone asked Georgia Power CEO Paul Bowers what he thought about a carbon tax, and he answered, “Why would anyone want that?” The Economist answered his question, 29 June 2013, Tepid, timid: The world will one day adopt a carbon tax—but only after exhausting all the alternatives,

Winston Churchill famously said America would always do the right thing after exhausting the alternatives. The right thing in climate You can always count on Americans to do the right thing, after they ve tried everything else. --Winston Churchill policy for all the big countries is a carbon tax, which is simpler and less vulnerable to fluctuations in emissions than cap-and-trade schemes. For years, such a tax has been a non-starter politically. But as the alternatives are tested to destruction, it deserves to be looked at again. Current environmental policies will not keep the rise in global temperatures to below 2°C—the maximum that most climate scientists think safe. A carbon tax, if stiff enough, could. Big polluters should assume that such a tax will one day arrive, and start planning for it now.

Dear Paul Bowers,

Stop being tepid and timid. Go beyond Continue reading →