Tag Archives: Georgia Power

Coal and natural gas cost effective vs. energy efficiency, wind, and solar power? –Stephanie Coffin @ SO 2013-05-22

SO CEO Tom Fanning is a true believer in “all of the above”, yet a skeptic about natural gas. However, he really doesn’t have much faith in renewables, as he indicated at the 22 May 2013 Southern Company Stockholder Meeting and even more strongly in the Wall Street Journal.

retirees and stockholders in the room wonder about the $13 million salary --Stephanie Coffin This question is from Stephanie Coffin of Atlanta, Georgia, and she holds 18 shares of stock.

TF: Hello, Stephanie.

SC: How are you, Tom?

TF: Dynamite. How are you?

your income --Stephanie Coffin SC: Last year, I came to this meeting to ask a question and to listen to the Southern Company reports. And so before I came I got to thinking about what has changed since the last meeting. I think two things, and then I’ll ask my question.

The first is the chairperson’s salary increased 34 percent, over $13 million a year. I’m sure the retirees and stockholders in the room wonder about the $13 million salary and see that as negative PR in the face of continuing recession. $13 million a year, most of us are on fixed income. I mean, your income My income --Stephanie Coffin is fixed, too, but it’s very high. Mine is pretty low and we all have to pay electric bills.

The second change, and then I’ll ask my question, is that now 70 — 97 percent of all scientists believe that climate change — that is, global warming — is real and caused by human activity and this is a big shift. Last year we were the climate deniers, we’re in control, and now 97 percent of all scientists say it’s real, it’s coming, you better get ready. In the face of this scientific consensus the Southern Company has maintained its reliance on fossil fuels, mountaintop coal, old coal plants and pushing nuclear power with huge wattage demands and the dangers of nuclear wastes.

While I applaud the Southern Company’s baby steps Continue reading →

Why are you gambling on nuclear instead of solar? –Gloria Tatum @ SO 2013-05-22

Why is SO gambling our health and dollars on Plant Vogtle when Georgia Power could be getting on with solar power? SO CEO Tom Fanning avoided the first part of Gloria Tatum’s question by simply denying it, and danced around the second part by saying the rate hike for Plant Vogtle’s cost overruns would only be 6 to 8 percent, not 12 percent. Do you want to pay 6 or 8 percent more for a radioactive white elephant when you could be getting power from the sun for less?

The floor person at the 22 May 2013 Southern Company Stockholder Meeting introduced Gloria Tatum with 164 shares, representing Nuclear Watch South, and the SO CEO insisted

TF: Call me Tom. Gee whiz.

Gloria Tatum GT: Tom. Hi,Tom. It’s great to be here on this beautiful day.

TF: Thank you. Yes ma’am.

GT: And I know Southern Company’s done many wonderful things, but I want to point out a few things to you today.

First, you know, after the Fukushima meltdown, TEPCO’s $50 billion nuclear complex became a worthless liability. The deadly radiation still circles the planet, polluting the earth and increasing cancer. Other countries have abandoned their nuclear and they’re looking to renewable, but Southern Company’s affiliate, Georgia Power, continues construction on two new nuclear reactors at Plant Vogtle. Now Shell Bluff is a community down the stream from Plant Vogtle and it has experienced a 25 percent increase in cancer since Vogtle 1 and 2 have been built.

Another problem with Vogtle Continue reading →

Georgia Power wants more of your money to pay for its bad bets

It’s the annual Georgia Power rate hike, blaming everything except coal and nukes.

Georgia Power PR 28 June 2013, Georgia Power seeks cost recovery for infrastructure investments,

Georgia Power today asked the Georgia Public Service Commission (PSC) for permission to increase its base rates approximately $482 million, or 6.1 percent. The request is being made to allow the company to recover the costs of recent and future investments in infrastructure —including environmental controls, transmission and distribution, generation, and smart grid technologies — required in order to maintain high levels of reliability and superior customer service.

The proposed change in rates would be effective Jan. 1, 2014.

What a coincidence! One year to the month after the last rate hike. Once again blaming “smart grid technologies, environmental controls”, etc. Much more likely, this has to do with the recent downgrades of Georgia Power’s parent the Southern Company, and those were for coal and nukes. As Adam Smith said two centuries ago, “utilities levy an absurd tax upon the rest of their fellow citizens”.

-jsq

Southern Company downgraded because of coal and nukes –two analysts

It’s not like they weren’t warned, about coal and about nukes. It’s not Standard & Poor’s this time, but that could happen soon, too. SO’s biggest part, Georgia Power, is neck-deep in nukes, as Edison Electric Institute’s warning about the disruptive challenge of distributed solar starts to affect its parent’s stock price.

Zacks.com wrote 21 June 2013, Southern Company Slips to Sell – Analyst Blog

On Jun 20, Zacks Investment Research downgraded electric utility firm, Southern Company ( SO ), to a Zacks Rank #4 (Sell).

Why the Downgrade?

Continue reading →

Sun dancing as a Georgia Trend

GSEA, GaSU, Georgia Power, and even me are quoted in a Georgia Trend feature about solar power in Georgia. As Mahatma Gandhi is alleged to have said when asked his opinion of western civilization: “that would be a good idea!”

Jerry Grillo wrote for Georgia Trend July 2013, Sun Dancing: As Georgia’s solar capacity shoots skyward, a new state utility is proposed,

It’s the sun, the sol of our solar system, to which everything that lives and moves, including the wind, owes its existence. Without the sun, there is no us, no Earth. You can’t miss it. It’s the biggest thing in the sky, the biggest thing for at least 24 trillion miles, and at 4.5 billion years old it is middle-aged and remains the most abundant source of power between here and Alpha Centauri, zapping our planet every minute with more energy than humanity can consume in a year.

The best thing is, the sun is free. Still, for most of those eons, capturing the sun’s energy for human consumption has been like picking crops with a catcher’s mitt.

But over the past few years, photovoltaic technology (“photo” for light, “voltaic” meaning electricity) has gotten way more efficient, and the previously prohibitive price has fallen dramatically, setting the stage for what’s happening now in Georgia: Solar deployment and interest are increasing dramatically.

“This is a very dynamic time for solar energy, and it demonstrates a pent-up demand and interest in solar energy for Georgia,” says Mark Bell, chair of the Georgia Solar Energy Association (GSEA) and president of Atlanta-based Empower Energy Tech-nology. “There’s a great potential here for real, sustainable economic development.”

Grillo was pretty thorough in getting a range of points of view (with the notable exception of Georgia Sierra Club), and the whole article is well worth reading.

Among the things I told Grillo back at the beginning of May, I’m especially glad he included this:

Continue reading →

Interactive charts: U.S. nuclear power reactors (NRC data)

Why are all these “dependable” baseload capacity nukes down so much? LAKE: NRC Power Reactor Status See for yourself in these interactive graphs of NRC Power Reactor Status. They’re in Google annotated timeline format, with all the zoom and pan features used by Google finance for stock charts. But these Reactor Status charts show seven years of daily NRC power percentage data. Want to see last month, six months, any 7 days, or some other period? Now you can, for all 104 reactors, including the ones recently removed by NRC from status because they’ve closed permanently.

You can view your own local reactors in any of 20 charts. Why so many graphs? Google annotated timeline charts apparently were meant for comparing a few stock prices, and don’t handle more than about seven curves well. But you can see things in these graphs that are hard to spot in NRC’s daily tables.

Example: Southern Nuclear Operating Co., Inc. (Alabama, Georgia)

Continue reading →

Ready, willing, and able for wind –Jill Stuckey for Georgia Southern @ GA PSC 2013-06-18

Jill Stuckey spoke for wind power for economic development on behalf of the College of Engineering and Information Technologies at Georgia Southern University. She said with its experience in solar and wind Georgia Southern is willing, able, and ready to help at the Georgia Public Service Commission meeting Tuesday 18 June 2013.

Here’s the video:


Ready, willing, and able for wind –Jill Stuckey for Georgia Southern
Georgia Power proposed closing of coal plants,
Administrative Session, GA Public Service Commission (GA PSC),
Doug Everrett (1: south Georgia), Tim Echols (2: east Georgia), Chairman Chuck Eaton (3: metro Atlanta), Stan Wise (5 north Georgia), Bubba McDonald (4: west Georgia),
Video by John S. Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE), 244 Washington Street SW, Atlanta, GA, 30334-9052, 18 June 2013.

-jsq

The cloudy day doesn’t last for an entire month –John S. Quarterman @ GA PSC 2013-06-18

The disruptive challenge electric utilities face is like 1: Solar power telephone companies faced years ago, as Edison Electric Institute recently pointed out. Circuit switching 20 years ago is like distributed solar power and the smart grid it needs now; this is what I described at the Georgia Public Service Commission meeting Tuesday 18 June 2013.

Hi, I’m John Quarterman, I’m from Lowndes County, down near the Florida line. These videos I’ve been taking are with Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange and you’ll find them on YouTube later.

Two things Now I’d like to commend Georgia Power for helping fund our Industrial Authority down in Lowndes County to do a strategic plan. And in the focus groups they did with that, they discovered there’s at least two things everybody wants: business, education, health care, the people in general: Continue reading →

Brother and sister students speak truth to Georgia Power’s PSC

It’s elementary, they said:

Our future is in your hands.
Please approve Georgia Power’s coal plant retirement. Encourage them to move further beyond coal, investing in clean renewable energy that can drive our economy and save our generation.

Jim Ries wrote for One More Generation 23 June 2013, Please Switch to More Renewable Energy,

Carter and Olivia were invited to speak during the Georgia Public Service Commission IRP Hearing. Our friends from the Sierra Club and from Greening Forward asked Olivia and Carter to speak and to share their concerns with regards to the fact that GA Power is still focusing on burning more coal as opposed to switching to alternative power solutions like wind and solar.

As a monopoly, Georgia Power is Continue reading →

L.A. rooftop solar sprawling power plant

The L.A. Times’ online poll is currently running 92% yes on “Is distributed generation the future of electric grids?” And Los Angeles is doing something about distributed rooftop solar power. Something we could be doing right here in south Georgia. If Georgia Power won’t do it, local governments could. After all, if the Industrial Authority can float bonds to buy land for business parks that sit vacant, it could float bonds to fund rooftop solar. Or maybe sell some of that land to pay for solar.

John Upton wrote for grist 27 June 2013, L.A. launches nation’s largest solar rooftop program,

The first small shoots of what will grow into a sprawling solar power plant have sprouted in Los Angeles.

L.A.’s Department of Water and Power is rolling out the country’s biggest urban rooftop program, which will pay residents for solar energy they produce in excess of their own needs. That will give residents a reason to install more solar capacity on their roofs than they can use in their homes.

According to Catherine Green in the L.A. Times yesterday, L.A. program lets DWP pay customers to generate solar power: Clean L.A. Solar’s goal is to add 150 megawatts, or enough to power 30,000 homes, to the city grids. Continue reading →