Tag Archives: Georgia Power

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

VDT links Plant Vogtle nuke cost overruns to Kemper Coal

Even the VDT has caught on to cost overruns for Kemper Coal and the new nukes at Plant Vogtle.

VDT posted an AP article 29 July 2013, Miss. deal may figure into Georgia nuclear plant, and Charlotte Observer posted it the day before, including Ray Henry as the author,

In Mississippi, the Southern Co. utility took financial losses when the cost of building a new power plant went over budget. In Georgia, another of the company’s projects is going over budget, but it has not yet taken a financial hit.

Southern Company subsidiary Mississippi Power promised utility regulators that it would charge its customers only for $2.4 billion in costs for building a coal-fired power plant in Kemper Country. Those customers will also have to pay off another $1 billion in bonds for the project, though the utility cannot make a profit off that borrowed money.

The utility’s deal in Mississippi has become a point of debate as Georgia regulators consider who should pay for the increased cost of building two more nuclear reactors at Plant Vogtle (VOH’-gohl), southeast of Augusta. Public Service Commissioner Tim Echols said he wants Southern Co. subsidiary Georgia Power to consider a Mississippi-style deal here, and Georgia regulators are carefully tracking financial developments in Mississippi.

Echols said he was interested in the idea of a project spending cap.

“I’m sure when they made that deal they didn’t think they were going to over the cap, but they did,” Echols said.

Oh, come now, they went 26 times over budget last time. Why would anyone believe Continue reading

Fukushima has contaminated its aquifer; what about our aquifer?

Fukushima is dumping radioactive water into its aquifer. Plant Hatch is the same design and sits above the Floridan Aquifer we drink out of. Can’t happen here? On 19 December 2001 TEPCO said there was no possibility of a tsunami large enough to knock out Fukushima Daiichi. Plant Hatch is the same design as Fukushima, and while a tsunami really is unlikely at Hatch, for all we know Hatch still has substandard fire protection and the risk if Hatch does go bad is like the risk if a French reactor goes bad: soil contamination the size of France and Germany (or larger than Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina, and north Florida) plus radioactive contamination of the aquifer we drink out of.

Harvey Wasserman wrote for the Progress today, The Fukushima Nightmare Gets Worse, Continue reading

Southern Company backed off on cost overrun request

Fitch reaffirmed SO’s and Georgia Power’s (and Mississippi Power’s) ratings today after Southern Company backed off a week ago from risking losing the larger cost overrun request to GA PSC. Beware: SO will be back, when maybe fewer people are looking. Or maybe that tiger team will issue its summer report and the titanic Southern Company ship will finally change course towards distributed solar and wind power.

Jonathan Shapiro wrote for AP 31 July 2013, AP: Georgia Power To Waive Request for Extra Vogtle Costs

[Southern Company] CEO Thomas Fanning told analysts Wednesday that the Atlanta-based company reached a preliminary deal with Georgia officials.

Under the plan, the company would only seek right now to collect the $209 million that it spent building the two new reactors at Plant Vogtle from July to December.

The company would waive Continue reading

The Korean nuclear mafia: power companies, vendors, and testers

Document-forging Doosan was just the tip of the Korean nuclear corruption iceberg.

It’s different stateside, right? San Onofre 2 and 3 Oh, wait: U.S. NRC is refusing to supply Congress with safety documents related to the closing of San Onofre. But Plant Vogtle is much safer, right? Southern Company CEO Tom Fanning told us so. Of course, he also told us Kemper Coal would come in on budget, and now SO is writing off $611 million after taxes. But that bad concrete pour, the misplaced reactor vessel, the leaking tritium; those are all flukes, right? Meanwhile, solar panels don’t leak tritium, and if you misplace one, you only lose money, not risk lives.

By Choe Sang-Hun in NY Times yesterday, Scandal in South Korea Over Nuclear Revelations,

Korean nuclear reactor Weeks of revelations about the close ties between South Korea’s nuclear power companies, their suppliers and testing companies have led the prime minister to liken the industry to a mafia.

The scandal started after an anonymous tip in April prompted an official investigation. Prosecutors have indicted some officials at a testing company on charges of faking safety tests on parts for the plants. Some officials at the state-financed company that designs nuclear power plants were also indicted on charges of taking bribes from testing company officials in return for accepting those substandard parts.

Worse yet, Continue reading

Nuclear an economic boon despite high costs –Tim Echols

Some of the “stuff” that happened before and after GA PSC Tim Echols cheered nuclear Friday.

GA Public Service Commissioner Tim Echols wrote in the Athens Banner-Herald Friday Echols: Nuclear power can be economic boon to Southeast,

Just when we thought nuclear power might be on a comeback, well, stuff happened. Only time will tell if Georgia and South Carolina can “jump-start” a nuclear renaissance. Let’s hope we can, because low-cost base-load energy — the amount of electricity available 24 hours a day — is a key to economic growth.

Stuff like this happened:

Southern Company missed earnings on Kemper Coal but Plant Vogtle is dominant

The dominant financial consideration is “what’s going to happen with Georgia”, meaning with nuclear Plant Vogtle, said SO CEO Tom Fanning, referring to the GA PSC CWIP monitoring hearings currently in progress. Meanwhile, that $160 million estimate 2 July 2013 of more Kemper Coal cost overruns by 30 July turned into $278 million after taxes (AP). This is on top of $333 million after taxes in May. SO earnings fell 52% (WSJ), missing projections, and SO stock dropped 2% yesterday.

Remember GA PSC Tim Echols already suggested a Plant Vogtle cost overrun cap similar to the one Mississippi PSC applied to Kemper Coal that caused SO to have to eat all those costs. If that happens, SO’s got financial problems.

Has SO seen the solar light yet, as in reliable, dependable, and deployable on time and on budget? Nope. Solar was tacked onto the end of Tom Fanning’s summary of interesting stuff in the 31 July 2013 earnings call: 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

German wind overpowering?

The biggest wind problem in Germany is it produces too much power? Fortunately there are two well-known simple solutions to this problem raised by GA Public Service Commissioner Tim Echols in a comment yesterday. I do want to thank him for engaging in dialog with the public.

Tim Echols wrote:

eeX DE wind 2013-07-20 We need nuclear, coal and gas as our baseload power. Germany is doing the opposite and they are in trouble. Their people pay triple what we pay for power, and when the wind is blowing at night or on the weekend, the Germans have to pay Poland to take their excess power. All of that primarily because the German people hate nuclear power. In Georgia, we are leading the nation, and I am fine with that. I just want to make sure our ratepayers are protected and not paying for the learning curve of new nuclear.

As FERC Chairman Jon Wellinghof has been pointing out for years, baseload is the problem. The baseload ideology stands in the way of the distributed solar power the vast majority of the American people want, and in the way of wind power.

Regarding German power costs to customers, Germany is far north of here, with far less sun, and Germany has depended heavily on Feed-In Tariffs, which may or may not be what we need in Georgia. Meanwhile, what’s been hiking power rates in Georgia is not solar or wind power, it’s nuclear and natural gas. And not for Feed-In Tariffs, either, which are only charged on actual energy production. The Georgia legislature approved Construction Work in Progress (CWIP) for nuclear, and GA PSC has raised rates to pay for natural gas plant construction, which amounts to the same thing. If we want to save ratepayers money, we should get on with solar and wind power.

Now to the problem with two well-known solutions: Continue reading

GA PSC member ties Plant Vogtle nuke cost overruns to Kemper Coal in Mississippi

If Georgia Power stonewalls on cost overruns, will it lose at least one Commissioner this time? Long-time nuclear supporter Tim Echols suggested at the hearings this morning that cost overruns at nuclear Plant Vogtle should be capped like Southern Company was forced to do for Kemper Coal by the Mississippi PSC. Standard & Poor’s already downgraded SO because of Kemper Coal and two analysts have downgraded SO for sticking to coal and nukes instead of doing more solar and wind. If SO’s majority part Georgia Power loses the GA PSC, it could be curtains for Plant Vogtle’s new nukes.

Ray Henry wrote for AP this morning, Southern Co. challenged on nuclear plant costs,

Southern Co. subsidiary Georgia Power has asked to raise the budget for its share of massive project by $737 million to roughly $6.85 billion.

Public Service Commission Tim Echols asked whether the firm has considered offering a deal like one it reached in Mississippi over a separate plant that also proved expensive to build. The company has absorbed $540 million in losses in Mississippi and could face more.

Remember, Tim Echols has for two years now been Continue reading