Category Archives: Solar

How can we get Georgia to move ahead in solar power?

If we can’t expect Georgia Power or Southern Company to change their tune about solar power, what can we do? Legislate and raise public pressure, while getting on with installing what solar power we can.

Maybe it’s time to pass something like HB 267 that would limit Georgia Power’s profits on that 19-month-late and $1 billion over budget nuclear boondoggle at Plant Vogtle. Instead of pouring more money down that broken concrete pit on the Savannah River, we need something like GA SB 51, The Georgia Cogeneration and Distributed Generation Act, to fix Georgia’s special solar financing problem, the antique 1973 Territorial Electric Service Act. That’s the 40-year-old antiquated law that SO CEO Thomas A. Fanning says “we need to protect”. Maybe SO does, for Fanning’s huge raises in compensation. Georgia Power and SO are not only defending that antique law, they’re preventing a Georgia Renewable Portfolio Standard (REPS) by stopping passage of bills like HB 503. Georgia Power, SO, and super-lobby ALEC systematically oppose renewable energy standards. They do this so successfully there are no REPS in Southern Company (SO)’s service territory, nor in most of SO’s surrounding “Competitive Generation Opportunities” states. One of the few exceptions is North Carolina, and a bill was introduced there to eliminate NC’s REPS.

Maybe it’s even time to do something about Georgia Power’s 11% guaranteed profit. Isn’t Georgia Power supposed to be a utility operating for the good of Georgians? Why does it get a guaranteed profit to pass on to Southern Company shareholder dividends and SO executive bonuses?

Georgia Power and even Southern Company could suddenly flip for solar power like Austin Energy did in 2003 and Cobb EMC did in 2012. But that probably won’t happen without a lot of public pressure, legal requirements by the Georgia legislature or PSC, or a shareholder revolt. So let’s start with the public pressure….

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Solar shakeout

Solar companies are shaking out just like car and computer companies before them. Dozens of automobile manufacturers shook out to a handful of major ones; Tesla is the first new one in decades. So many computer hardware and software companies went under or were bought by bigger ones that it would take a very long blog post to list them all; I could name a dozen or two off the top of my head. There’s a shakeout going on right now among mobile phone manufacturers: even mighty Nokia is sinking. The solar industry is going through that same normal shakeout phase. Will electric utilities be next?

Stephen Lacey wrote for greentechsolar 23 April 2013, Four Must-See Charts on the Future of the Global Solar Market: Who will be left standing when the dust settles?

In 2009, after Spain’s market collapsed and the world faced a crippling financial crisis, GTM Research predicted a shake-out in the manufacturing sector. But unexpected growth in global demand, particularly in European markets, helped keep many producers afloat.

Then, in 2010 and 2011, we saw a surge of new manufacturing capacity — much of it driven by China — that created the structural oversupply faced by the industry today. As illustrated by the growing list of deceased solar companies and acquisitions, the delayed shake-out in the industry is now well underway.

This morning at the GTM Solar Summit, Shayle Kann, vice president of research, shared his outlook on consolidation, module prices, and the shifting global demand through 2016. Here are four charts from his presentation that provide a glimpse of what the world may look like in the next three years.

In 2010, when the period of irrational growth began in solar manufacturing, there were 357 active module producers.

By the end of this year, that number will be down to 145. And in 2016, it will drop below 100. (So if you’re at a conference talking to a person involved in manufacturing, there’s a good chance he or she might be out of a job or working for a different firm the next time you see them.)

He then predicts that solar PV panel prices may actually rise briefly due to fewer manufacturers. However, as he notes, demand will keep going up. And demand combined with economies of scale may make prices continue down with Moore’s Law. I think his installed capacity graph is way too conservative, because he doesn’t go back far enough, which would reveal that 2010 growth is not an anomaly, it’s a steady continuation of the previous decade (well, except in Georgia). We shall see what happens in the next few years.

One thing’s for certain: a few bankruptcies are not a problem for the world’s fastest-growing industry. They are merely a symptom of any industry growing that fast. Solar panels will continue to spread, ever-faster, and electric utilities need to adapt or soon their big utility shakeout will start, too. The utility shakeout may look more like an increase in companies, as many solar installers and vendors move in to handle distributed solar power if the incumbents won’t do it. That’s my speculation, and again we’ll see.

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Dragging Georgia behind in solar power: Georgia Power and Southern Company

As long as we leave it to Georgia Power and Southern Company, Georgia will remain far behind in solar power jobs, profits, and energy independence. Hear Southern Company CEO Thomas A. Fanning say:

We remain very bullish on solar. When we think about renewables, I think renewables are exceedingly important to this nation’s future. My sense is until we see significant technology innovation, my sense is that that will probably very late in this decade or beyond that, we still are gonna get by far the lion’s share of electricity from central stations.

SO’s “bullish on solar” means nuclear, “clean coal”, and natural gas big baseload power stations, and forget about solar or wind. That’s why Georgia Power has raised customer rates to pay for gas and nuclear plants while complaining about solar. Here’s Georgia Power CEO Paul Bowers:

“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.”

What is to be done?

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Georgia behind Maryland and Massachusetts in solar power

California and Texas ahead of Georgia in solar power, sure, but Maryland and Massachusetts, small and far to the north with less sun? Does that seem right to you?

According to the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA), Georgia should be number 5. Georgia should be moving up the rankings as fast as any state except maybe Arizona or Colorado, according to an Arizona State University study of two years ago that said Georgia was third among state that would benefit from solar deployment through generating and exporting energy to other states. The U.S. as a whole keeps installing far more solar power each year, but Georgia Power and Southern Company keep holding Georgia back.

It’s great that Valdosta will soon get 2 more megawatts of local solar power. But while we’re waiting for Georgia Power to slowly get around to doling out 277 megawatts over several years, New Jersey has 1,000 megawatts already installed. Georgia is #22, behind #21 Connecticut. Why do we let that continue?

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Videos: audit, solar, office, and more @ VLCIA 2013-04-16

Interesting stuff (audit and internal controls, many meetings, 2 megawatts of solar power, searching for and finances of a new office from a mysterious seller) in the items missing from the posted agenda yet presented anyway, while two staff were elsewhere.

Here’s the agenda with a few notes and some links to the videos. * marks items that were not in the posted agenda.

Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority
Agenda
Tuesday, April 16, 2013 5:30 p.m.
Industrial Authority Conference Room
2110 N. Patterson Street
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Two more megawatts of local solar power! @ VLCIA 2013-04-16

One megawatt at DuPont and one megawatt at Valdosta’s Mud Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant: that’s two more megawatts of solar power coming to Valdosta and Lowndes County! This was revealed at the 16 April 2013 Board Meeting of the Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority.

Project Director Allan Ricketts was on a speaker phone, so Executive Director Andrea Schruijer gave the Existing Industry and Project Report. She thinks maybe three existing industry expansions in second and third quarter 2013. They’ve continued working with a pharmaceutical company about locating here; more on that later. Continued work with three renewable and sustainable energy companies, and Georgia Power is cooperating.

We did receive notification that two of those advanced solar initiatives have been approved by Georgia Power Company.

One of them is a megawatt solar expansion at DuPont. The other is a megawatt solar expansion at the City of Valdosta’s Mud Creek Wastewater Plant.

She didn’t mention that in most states such projects wouldn’t have to be approved for doled-out quotas by a power company.

Schruijer also talked about Continue reading →

If UB, why not VSU? Solar Strand Earth Week

Earth Week at the University at Buffalo, featuring the Solar Strand, 3,200 solar panels generating 750 kilowatts about 1,000 miles north of Valdosta State University. Rutgers U. in New Jersey has 8 solar megawatts coming from a parking lot. If there, why not here? -jsq

Solar rooftops in a New Orleans neighborhood

Want people to get rooftop solar? Put solar on rooftops where people can see it. Cities and power companies and even NGOs like Habitat for Humanity can help with that.

Andri Antoniades wrote for Takepart.com 10 November 2012, Katrina-Ravaged Neighborhood Reemerges as ‘Largest Solar Housing Development in Southeast’: The former St. Thomas Housing Projects are reborn into a square mile of solar-powered homes,

The St. Thomas Housing Project in New Orleans used to be known best as a high-crime area, until Hurricane Katrina swept it it all away. But seven years after the fact, St. Thomas has been reborn as the mixed-income River Garden Apartments, which has once again gained notoriety, but this time as the “largest solar neighborhood in the Southeast.”

The River Garden Apartments encompass eight blocks that cover about one square mile of New Orleans. The brightly colored homes are topped with solar panels and according to Clean Technica, the development is Louisiana’s largest solar project to date.

And also in Oakland, California:

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Gulf 3 years ago; Caspian 5 years ago: BP oil well blowouts

Two years before BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig poisoned the Gulf of Mexico (Saturday was the third anniversary), apparently BP had a very similar disaster in the Caspian Sea and covered it up. Is this a company or this the 13 spills in 30 days industry we want piping tar sands crude across America to the Gulf for all of 35 permanent jobs and CO2 emissions like 51 coal plants? There’s a cleaner, cheaper, and more energy-independent way: solar and wind power can power the U.S. and the world.

Greg Palast wrote for EcoWatch 19 April 2013, BP Covered Up Blow-out Two Years Prior to Deadly Deepwater Horizon Spill,

Two years before the Deepwater Horizon blow-out in the Gulf of Mexico, another BP off-shore rig suffered a nearly identical blow-out, but BP concealed the first one from the U.S. regulators and Congress.

This week, EcoWatch.org located an eyewitness with devastating new information about the Caspian Sea oil-rig blow-out which BP had concealed from government and the industry.

The witness, whose story is backed up by rig workers who were evacuated from BP’s Caspian platform, said that had BP revealed the full story as required by industry practice, the eleven Gulf of Mexico workers “could have had a chance” of survival. But BP’s insistence on using methods proven faulty sealed their fate.

One cause of the blow-outs was the same in both cases: the use of a money-saving technique—plugging holes with “quick-dry” cement.

By hiding the disastrous failure of its penny-pinching cement process in 2008, BP was able to continue to use the dangerous methods in the Gulf of Mexico—causing the worst oil spill in U.S. history. April 20 marks the second anniversary of the Gulf oil disaster.

There’s more in the article, such as this:

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BP: the beaches are open for everyone to enjoy!

BP must be getting desperate about people catching onto what they did to the Gulf. A BP video ad has been replaying itself every few minutes beside various news stories since yesterday, claiming two years after the oil disaster (“spill” doesn’t describe it) “the beaches are open for everyone to enjoy!” BP’s website says “We are helping economic and environmental restoration efforts in the Gulf Coast as part of our ongoing commitment to the region following the Deepwater Horizon accident in 2010”. Neither the ad nor the website says BP actually cleaned up the oil. Because they didn’t. It’s still there, as is the even more toxic “dispersant” Corexit BP dumped on top of the oil to make it sink. Both are busily poisoning dolphins, fish, birds, and humans.

Antonia Juhasz wrote for The Nation 7 May 2012, Investigation: Two Years After the BP Spill, A Hidden Health Crisis Festers,

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