Tag Archives: GDF Suez

European utilities scared of renewable energy

Another reason Southern Company needs to get on with a smart grid, using its biggest private R&D outfit in the U.S. Now that solar has reached grid parity with everything including natural gas (and years since it passed nuclear), if the utilities don’t get out in front, they’re going to be left behind.

Derek Mead wrote for Motherboard yesterday, European Utilities Say They Can’t Make Money Because There’s Too Much Renewable Energy,

Renewable energy has been on a tear the past few years, with growth in many countries spurred by subsidies for wind and solar power. Now the heads of 10 European utility companies say EU subsidies should end, because they've got more renewable energy than they know what to do with.

The 10 CEOs in question, who refer to themselves as the Magritte group because they first met in an art gallery, represent companies that control about half the power capacity of Europe. The group gave a press conference today— Reuters says that 10 such executives giving a joint public statement is “unprecedented”—to hammer home a message they’ve been trumpeting ahead of an EU energy summit in 2014: There’s too much energy capacity, which has driven prices down so far that they can’t make any money.

As long as there are nukes or coal plants, there’s too much capacity. European utilities need to get on with things like Continue reading →

Solar park in Ontario –GDF Suez

If a French energy utility can put a 10 megawatt solar park in Ontario, more than a thousand miles north of here, why is Southern Company still locating all its new solar installations in western states and none in Georgia? GDF Suez is starting the new Suez Canal of solar energy. What are Southern Company and Georgia Power doing?

Enerzine.com posted today, GDF Suez met en service son premier parc solaire au Canada, GDF Suez commissioned its first solar park in Canada,

A consortium of GDF Suez Canada, Japan’s Mitsui, and Fiera Axium Infrastructure Tuesday announced the commissioning of a solar photovoltaic farm in Brockville, Ontario, with an installed capacity of 10 MW.

The solar park is comprised of 42,000 solar panels spread over an area of over 32 hectares [79 acres], enough to generate electricity for about 1,700 homes.

The proposed $50 million project benefited from the Feed-in Tarriff (FIT) program. The electricity produced will be sold to the local company in charge of Energy, Ontario Power Authority, for a period of 20 years.

“With Brockville, we diversify our technology base and enter a new and exciting field. We are proud to provide another form of clean, renewable energy to the province and we hope this will be the first of a list of many solar projects,” said Mike Crawley President of GDF Suez Canada.

The project located in Brockville, Leeds County is the first solar power plant operated by the joint venture in Canada. The consortium currently operates in Canada 362 MW of wind power. Other wind projects with a total capacity (300 MW) is under construction in Ontario and British Columbia.

Translation mostly by google translate with a few touches by me.

-jsq