Georgia could do this. Or the Valdosta-Lowndes Development Authority could do it locally. At least one student at Georgia Southern did a thesis on a mcirogrid there. Where’s VSU? Wiregrass Tech? ABAC?
Katherine Tweed, Greentechmedia, 9 July 2015, New York Looks to Cement Its Lead as Microgrid Capital of the World, Continue reading
For most of June, Georgia Power has had two ads rotating on the
five LED billboards in Valdosta, saying
Giving you the power to go solar —Georgia Power
When? Tomorrow, July 1st, as Southern Company CEO Tom Fanning said at the SO Stockholder meeting 27 May 2015. Why then? Because that’s when HB 57, aka the Solar Power Free-Market Financing Act of 2015, goes into effect. As Tom Fanning has made his mantra since that meeting:
“If somebody wants to buy distributed generation, I want to sell it to ’em,”
Herman K. Trabish, Utility Dive, 11 June 2015 Inside Georgia Power’s move into the residential solar market: The utility says it will offer solar through an unregulated business, but installers fear possible anticompetitive impacts, Continue reading
U.S. president Jimmy Carter had a dream,
thirty six years before Pope Francis spelled out why we all need to escape a dark hot nightmare,
and Jimmy Carter’s sunny dream is now coming true.
Continue readingToday, in directly harnessing the power of the Sun, we’re taking the energy that God gave us, the most renewable energy that we will ever see, and using it to replace our dwindling supplies of fossil fuels.
A Budget Adoption Meeting 5PM before the 5:30 PM Regular Session,
as alluded to at
yesterday morning’s Work Session.
Is this a second Budget Hearing?
Does it count if it’s not advertised as a Hearing?
And it turns out the proposed budget is on the county’s website,
just not where they previously said it would be.
[5:00-5:30PM] Tuesday, June 23 Continue reading
Adoption of the Fiscal Year 2016 Budget to be considered Monday
morning and voted on Tuesday evening (see LAKE videos of Budget Hearing of two weeks ago), plus
a
GEFA Loan Modification
(thought they approved that 26 May 2015 for the Alapaha Water Treatment Plant),
a
Justice Assistance Grant,
a
SCADA lease-purchase agreement,
and the annual controversial
Mosquito Contract.
Two appointees each to KLVB and the Library Board. We don’t know who, because the county posted the agenda only in PDF, with no item sheets.
Public Hearing approved last month for the Abandonment of Buck Cato Road: what’s causing all of these in the last couple years? And they’ve found an excuse for their long-desired Continue reading
For the budget they will vote on Tuesday June 23rd,
two weeks ago
Finance Director Stephanie Black said:
“This is the public hearing”
What happened to the requirement for two budget public hearings?
The County Chairman said they had $7 million in requests above the expected revenue, so they had had a difficult time coming up with a budget. For (some of) how they did that, see the LAKE videos of the 18 May 2015 Budget Work Session.
Half of this budget hearing consisted of the same presentation from that previous meeting. Then County Manager Joe Pritchard added Continue reading
Late o
tonight’s agenda but big on their minds, and described and pictured by
Stuart Taylor, VDT, 31 May 2015,
as consisting of:
Here’s the agenda:Valdosta-Lowndes Development Authority’s Business Retention Action Team, or BRAT, brings together a number of local and state organizations to offer services, information, solutions and contacts that a company might need.
“We’ve always had an existing industry program,” said Meghan Duke,VLDA marketing and community relations. “These organizations have always worked together, but now we’re formalizing it.”
Valdosta-Lowndes Development Authority
Tuesday, June 16, 2015 5:30 p.m. Continue reading
While electric bills still are tilted against local solar generation
and Georgia Power continues to levy its stealth CWIP tax for its
nuke boondoggle, yet solar power is rising this year on
Southern Company and Georgia Power.
Bret Wagenhorst posted on facebook 9 June 2015:
I find it decidedly ironic that a large portion of my last month electric bill went toward paying for a nuclear power plant that is hundreds of millions of dollars over budget, and which will no doubt cost millions of dollars a year to run and to manage its potentially deadly waste. I wonder if the money spent on the nuclear plant were used to purchase rooftop solar panels for all certified energy efficient Georgian homes if we citizens might not be better off in the long run. Thoughts?
Look for Nuclear Construction Cost Recovery Rider on that bill: Continue reading
It’s no wonder the Planning Commission wanted more time for these complicated
proposed county code changes to the Moody Activity Zoning Districts (MAZ).
The county could have just as easily put
the PDF of this item online with
the agenda.
They didn’t, so LAKE filed an open records request, which no only makes
these maps and text available to the public, it demonstrates
the county can supply electronic format via email.
Here’s plain text for the Board packet agenda item sheet and the Planning Division Amendment Notes, and images of all the other pages from the PDF.
See also the Continue reading
Another battery entry, Ambri with a liquid metal battery and $50 million startup funding, understands it’s the battery market vs. fossil fuels. And batteries plus sun, wind, and water power will win.
Jeff McMahon, Forbes, 4 June 2015,
Want To Build A Better Battery? Don’t Talk To Battery Experts,
Like Tesla’s Powerpack, Ambri’s liquid-metal battery is designed to provide grid-level storage that can supplement intermittent renewables like solar and wind, making a grid that depends on renewables as reliable as one that depends on fossil fuels or nuclear reactors.
Wednesday night, [Ambri founder MIT Professor Donald] Sadoway welcomed Tesla’s entry to the grid-level battery industry. The competition, he said, is not between batteries, but between batteries and fossil fuels.