What’s happened to Georgia Power’s close-in-2002 Coal Plant Arkwright
that
Putnam County Manager Paul Van Houte used as a bad example?
According to
Georgia Power’s own online history:
In 2002, the company retired 11 generating units at three sites including
all of the units at Plant Atkinson and Plant Arkwright and two units at
Plant Mitchell.
Southern Company has online a
press release from 15 May 2002: Continue reading
Content two months running
in VLCIA agendas!
And the potential project list is up from six to nine.
Here’s
the agenda:
Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority
Agenda, Tuesday June 18, 2013 5:30 p.m.
Industrial Authority Conference Room
2110 N. Patterson Street
A Japanese feed-in tariff apparently provoked an explosion of solar power,
making Japan head up towards China and Germany in installed solar power.
Where is the U.S.?
Where is Georgia, with much more sun than Japan?
Maybe there is something more to learn from Fukushima after all, SO CEO Tom Fanning.
Michael Fitzpatrick wrote for Fortune 13 June 2013,
Japan: The world’s new star in solar power; China and Germany have new competition at the top,
PV cell production and shipment (GWp) in Japan: Total (orange), Export (green), and Domestic (blue)
しばともAccording to a report by energy analyst IHS on Japan’s energy mix,
Japan’s solar installations jumped by “a stunning 270% (in
gigawatts) in the first quarter of 2013.” That means by the end of
2013 there will be enough new solar panels equal to the capacity of
seven nuclear reactors. Such massive growth will allow Japan to
surpass Germany and become the world’s largest photovoltaics (PV)
market in terms of revenue this year.
How did this happen? Continue reading
Korea’s Doosan supplied that
that train-wrecked Plant Vogtle reactor vessel later
left unprotected sitting at Savannah port,
as well as parts for more than a dozen U.S. reactors.
And Doosan, according to the Korean government,
forged documentation that just shut down “a host of nuclear reactors”
in Korea, whose Prime Minister said,
“Those found to be involved in wrongdoing or corruption must be
sternly punished by the law, regardless of their rank and status.”
According to World Nuclear News 5 June 2008,
Doosan awarded further contract by Westinghouse, Continue reading
A big victory today for
anti-nuke and pro-solar activists:
the leaky San Onofre nukes will stay closed for good!
Cost to close them?
Between between $450 million and $650.
This is after
SoCal Edison and 20% owner San Diego Gas & Electric “more than $780
million replacing the steam generators several years ago, which
ratepayers are now repaying.”
The new Plant Vogtle nukes are already about
a billion dollars over and 19 months behind:
let’s
stop them now before Georgia Power and Southern Company
waste any more of our money on them.
PR from SoCal Edison today,
Southern California Edison Announces Plans to Retire San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station,
Birds nested using radioactive mud from WW II-era nuclear bomb production plant,
stopping attempts to clean up some of the worst leaking atomic waste,
much of which is liquid in leaking tanks near the Columbia River.
We have nuclear plants leaking radioactive tritium next to the Chattahoochee
and Altamaha Rivers, and radiation is detectible in the Savannah River
near Plant Vogtle.
How many radioactive solar panels or windmills have you heard of?
Annette Cary wrote for the Tri-City Herald yesterday,
Birds at Hanford vit plant spread contaminated waste,
Work stopped Wednesday morning at parts of the Hanford vitrification
plant after radioactive contamination was detected under a bird’s
nest, according to Bechtel National.The contamination is suspected of coming from mud used for the nest,
which may have belonged to a swallow, said Bechtel spokesman Todd
Nelson. Only a small amount of contaminated soil was found, and the
contamination was at a low level.
Should workers believe that?
SO CEO Tom Fanning used Julia O’Neal’s question about cost overruns
to tout the alleged benefits of Kemper Coal,
which include selling CO2 to oil companies to pump into the ground to
produce more oil.
He didn’t mention that oil is then burned to produce more CO2.
And that Mississippi lignite coal he said would otherwise stay in the ground?
Yes it and its CO2 would stay there if SO would get on with solar instead of coal.
Before her question, he had not said much about that project, mostly this about Major Projects, at
29 minutes and 28 seconds in
SO’s own video
of
the 22 May 2013 Southern Company Stockholder meeting.
You’ll have to skip there manually, because of the SO’s video format.
SO prohibited “unauthorized” videoing,
so we don’t have the usual LAKE video on YouTube.
I always call out Vogtle and Kemper County.
Both projects are going to serve our customers for decades to come.
We’ve had some challenges with Kemper.
We’ll probably talk about those later.
But when I think about the value that these projects will bring,
I think our customers, and the economy of the southeast,
will be benefited for decades.
And we’re very excited about the progress we’re making on both of those.
It’s curious he mentioned SO’s flagship coal and nuclear projects
without saying coal or nuclear.
And if by “progress” he means Continue reading
I’ve thanked Bubba McDonald for
being serious about solar.
However, 500 MW by Georgia Power in several years is nowhere
near enough, when
New Jersey has 1,000 MW already installed.
What we need in south Georgia is distributed solar power
for local jobs and direct reduction of electricity bills.
Making
a solar monopoly as in HB 657 wouldn’t solve that problem;
it would actually hinder
a real distributed solution.
Instead we need to reform that antique 1973 Territorial Electric Service Act
to enable financing for distributed solar.
Jim Galloway wrote for the AJC yesterday,
GOP revolutionaries push Georgia Power to embrace solar energy,
Lauren “Bubba” McDonald Jr. has spent more than four
decades in and around the state Capitol. That fact alone should
automatically disqualify him as a rabid revolutionary.And yet here he is, attempting to force real, radical change upon
one of this state’s most staid and revered institutions. McDonald is
the leader of a new and very Republican effort to require that
Georgia Power give solar energy a chance.
Somebody wants to build a solar farm in Effingham County, Georgia,
has found a location suitable for Georgia Power’s Advanced Solar Initiative
program, and is asking the Effingham County Commission to agree.
This item is on the
May 7th and
May 21st 2013 agendas for the Effingham County Commission:
VI Appearance 5:30 p.m. HMP Solar
Effingham County also has online
Meeting Documents
for each meeting.
The
Meeting Documents for May 21st include this memo from their
zoning administrator: Continue reading
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
