Tag Archives: energy

Net Metering in California: Megawatts and jobs

Net metering of solar energy works fine in California, where it increasingly provides electricity to meet peak demand. Georgia has a 2001 law that requires power utilities to do a version of net metering, but it’s a weak version and there’s a low cap on how much you can sell back to the utility.

The Georgia version, according to GEFA:

Net metering is the process whereby an energy consumer produces energy and then sells some or all of this energy to the “grid”, or major energy producers in the state. Under Georgia’s net metering laws, state residents and businesses can purchase and operate green energy capital, including photovoltaics, wind energy and fuel cells, and use this energy on-site. These residents and businesses may then sell any un-used, additional energy produced on-site to their energy provider. There is a maximum of 10 kilowatts (kW) for residential applications and up to 100 kW for commercial applications.
As you can see by GEFA’s pie chart, solar energy was too small to chart as a source of energy in Georgia as of 2004. With solar, we can burn less coal and uranium.

Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) has a report, Solar Net Metering in California,

Protecting Net energy metering (NEM) is the top policy priority of the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) for California in 2012. NEM is a billing arrangement that allows utility customers to offset some or all of their energy use (up to 1 MW) with selfgenerated renewable energy.
The definition sounds the same, except for the cap: 1 megawatt is 1000 kilowatts, so California’s current cap is 100 times the Georgia residential cap and 10 times the Georgia commercial cap, with apparently no distinction between residential and commercial.

The result is this: Continue reading →

Vermont Comprehensive Energy Plan

Georgia can do this if it wants to, Final Comprehensive Energy Plan 2011
The Comprehensive Energy Plan (CEP) addresses Vermont’s energy future for electricity, thermal energy, transportation, and land use. This document represents the efforts of numerous state agencies and departments, and input from stakeholders and citizens who shared their insights and knowledge on energy issues over the past ten months. The plan can be downloaded from this website or may be viewed at the Department of Public Service, 112 State Street, Montpelier during regular business hours.
More about those public comments:
The release of the Final CEP 2011 includes the CEP Public Involvement Report II (above). This document summarizes the written comments received during the second public comment period, between the release of the CEP Public Review Draft (CEP) on September 13, 2011 and the close of the public comment period on November 4, 2011. Over 1,380 written comments were received via email, the Comprehensive Energy Plan website, and hard copy between July 15 and November 4. Approximately 350 stakeholder groups, including municipal, business, and non-profit entities, submitted comments. Over 830 form-letter comments were signed and submitted by members of at least three different organizations. Over 200 comments were submitted by individual members of the general public.
Real input from the entire state. Imagine that!

Vermont’s population is about 622,000, or the size of a single Congressional district, so maybe it’s easier for them than for Georgia. On the other hand, maybe a regional south Georgia energy policy, or even a county policy, would be possible.

-jsq

No coal plant in Early County: LS Power withdraws all permit requests

Persistence by the local community and environmental groups has paid off in Early County, Georgia: the company that wanted to build a coal plant there has given up.

Press release from GreenLaw, 6 December 2011, Longleaf Defeat Marks End to Nation’s Longest Running Fight Against Coal Plant: Agreement Marks Milestone of 160 Coal Plants Canceled,

The country’s longest-running campaign against construction of a new coal plant ended today as LS Power, a New Jersey-based power company, announced that it will cancel plans to build the Longleaf Energy Station in Blakely, GA. Sierra Club, Friends of the Chattahoochee and GreenLaw have been organizing against the Longleaf coal plant since it was first proposed in 2001. This victory comes as part of a legal agreement between LS Power and Sierra Club.

This victory marks the 160th proposed coal plant canceled since Sierra Club launched its Beyond Coal campaign in 2005. This victory is particularly noteworthy because the struggle lasted for a decade and involved numerous hearings and appeals, and sustained local opposition by hundreds of Georgia residents. Longleaf was one of the very first plants proposed when, in 2001, the coal industry attempted to block clean energy development by building more than 150 new coal plants across the US, a move which would have effectively locked the nation into dependence on coal-fired electricity for the foreseeable future. Longleaf was one of the last remaining new coal projects proposed anywhere in the United States, counting 160 proposals that have now been defeated or abandoned in the past decade.

Several times over the past decade it looked like LS Power would move

Continue reading →

Solar is coming —Michael Noll

Received yesterday on Solar tipping point within a few years. -jsq
In line with comments made by Steven Chu:

Solar cheaper than fossil fuels in a decade, says Steven Chu, by Christopher Mims, 3 November 2011.

Solar power will be cheaper than fossil fuels at some point between the end of this decade and 2026*, said U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu

as well as a recent Op-Ed piece by Paul Krugman:

Here Comes Solar by Paul Krugman, 6 November 2011.

…progress in solar panels has been so dramatic and sustained that, as a blog post at Scientific American put it, “there’s now frequent talk of a ‘Moore’s law’ in solar energy,” with prices adjusted for inflation falling around 7 percent a year.

This has already led to rapid growth in solar installations, but even more change may be just around the corner. If the downward trend continues — and if anything it seems to be accelerating — we’re just a few years from the point at which electricity from solar panels becomes cheaper than electricity generated by burning coal.

And if we priced coal-fired power right, taking into account the huge health and other costs it imposes, it’s likely that we would already have passed that tipping point.

-Michael Noll

I added the blockquotes and the Moore’s Law link. Seems to me physicist Sec. Chu must be looking only at the sticker price, while economist Krugman is also looking at other costs and at externalities not currently included in the sticker price, yet still costing us in other ways. Add in the costs of wars for oil and I wonder how long ago solar already became cheaper than oil….

-jsq

Solar tipping point within a few years

Why is anyone still building fossil fuel (or nuclear for that matter) power plants when solar is within a few years of being cheaper? In other words, by the time those other plants can be built, solar is very likely to be more cost-effective?

Marcia Goodrich wrote for physorg yesterday, Affordable solar: It’s closer than you think,

It’s a matter of economics. A new analysis by [Michigan Technical University Associate Professor Joshua] Pearce and his colleagues at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, shows that solar photovoltaic systems are very close to achieving the tipping point: they can make electricity that’s as cheap—sometimes cheaper—as what consumers pay their utilities.

Here’s why. First, the price of solar panels has plummeted. “Since 2009, the cost has dropped 70 percent,” says Pearce. But more than that, the assumptions used in previous studies have not given solar an even break.

“Historically, when comparing the economics of solar and conventional energy, people have been very conservative,” says Pearce.

It’s not just that the cost of equipment keeps dropping; older panels remain more efficient than most previous estimates:
For example, most analyses assume that the productivity of solar panels will drop at an annual rate of 1 percent or more, a huge overestimation, according to Pearce. “If you buy a top-of-the-line solar panel, it’s much less, between 0.1 and 0.2 percent.”
There’s more in the news article, and in the journal article it references, A review of solar photovoltaic levelized cost of electricity, K. Brankera, M.J.M. Pathaka, J.M. Pearce, Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Volume 15, Issue 9, pages 4470-4482. doi:10.1016/j.rser.2011.07.104

-jsq

Solar is cost-effective —Dr. Noll @ LCC 13 September 2011

Dr. Noll made the case for the cost-effectiveness of solar energy through, among other things, an analogy to finaninc buying a car.

First Dr. Noll thanked people who had supported WACE’s anti-biomass work, and hoped people had had time to read his recent LTE in the VDT, Waste Not, Want Not. Then he addressed Commissioner Raines’ comments of the previous day. Dr. Noll pointed out that solar is fast becoming less expensive and with financing costs little more than a car or truck.

Here’s the video:


Solar is cost-effective —Dr. Noll @ LCC 13 September 2011
Regular Session, Lowndes County Commission (LCC),
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 13 September 2011.
Videos by Gretchen Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.

-jsq

Solar roads

Let your road charge your car, house, or business?

Liane Yvkoff wrote for cartech today, Solar Roadways to build solar-powered parking lot

Solar Roadways received a $750,000 grant from the Federal Highway Administration to build a parking lot paved with solar panels.

Last year the green infrastructure company demoed a 12 square-foot prototype of its solar road as phase 1 of this new technology. The prototype was made up of solar panels, heating elements, and a grid of wireless LED lights encased in durable glass that has the same traction as asphalt and doesn’t cause glare. The panels generate a total of 7.6 kilowatt hours of electricity per day that can be used to melt snow and ice, spell warnings for motorists, or be connected to weight sensitive panels that illuminate a crosswalk when activated. The solar road can also be connected to a smart grid to power nearby homes and businesses, or even electric cars.

-gretchen

gapower to buy 50 MW solar by 2015

Previously I wrote PSC lining up to vote for solar and last week they went and did it.

Georgia Power will buy solar by 2015, By Associated Press – Athens Banner-Herald, 24 July 2011:

ATLANTA — The Public Service Commission has approved Georgia Power’s plans to buy up to 50 megawatts of solar power by 2015.

The utility plans to strike agreements with individual solar-power producers to meet the deadline. The providers would have to be able to connect to the transmission system for Georgia Power or its sister utilities in Alabama, Florida and Mississippi.

Continue reading →

Stockholm Fossil Fuel Free City 2050

If a cold Nordic city at the latitude of Anchorage can do this, sunny Valdosta can do this:
The City of Stockholm’s “Action Programme on Climate Change” involves the participation of several groups: the City of Stockholm’s own departments, local businesses and those who live and work in the city. The work has been successful so far and the emission of greenhouse gases has been reduced. In 1990, emissions of 5.3 tons of CO2e* per person were registered compared with 4.0 tons CO2e per person in 2005.

The long-term target is for Stockholm to continue to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases at the same rate as between 1990 and 2005. In theory, this means that Stockholm will become a fossil fuel free city by 2050.

Greenhouse gas targets for the period of 2005-2050 compared with the base year of 1990.

* CO2e = means of specifying the effect of a gas on the emission of greenhouse gases compared to carbon dioxide.

-jsq

PS: This post owed to Tim Carroll, who saw it in Time Magazine.

A mix is the way to go —Dr. Noll

This comment from Dr. Noll came in today on San Antonio promises to shut down a coal plant:
Of course we can! And “a mix of energy efficiency, [energy conservation,] and new renewable energy projects” (e.g. solar, wind, geothermal)is the way to go. We simply need the political will and communal support to make such a transition possible.

I am still in Germany and am amazed to see just how much progress has been made here in these past couple of years. Solar thermal and solar voltaic installations abound on private residences; wind mills can be seen in many regions; cars are more fuel efficient, houses better insulated, public transportation accessible and affordable, recycling thoroughly organized, etc.

We may still have a long way to go, but until Continue reading →