Tag Archives: Georgia Power

Google invests in wind and solar

While Southern Company and Georgia Power pour money down that nuclear pit by the Savannah River and Progress Energy can’t afford to fix its Crystal River nuke, Google’s wind and solar projects are already online on time, all for less than the cost overruns so far at Vogtle or the fix-it price at Crystal River.

David Goldman wrote for CNN Money 10 January 2013, Google invests $200 million in Texas wind farm,

“We look for projects like Spinning Spur because, in addition to creating more renewable energy and strengthening the local economy, they also make for smart investments,” Kojo Ako-Asare, Google’s senior manager of corporate finance, said in a blog post.

Ako-Asare added that wind farms offer “attractive returns relative to the risks.”

Which is the opposite of nuclear’s huge risks relative to the apparently negative returns. So how much wind and solar energy does Google generate?

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Crystal River nuke still can’t get insurance payoff

Nobody wants to pay to fix Progress Energy's Crystal River nuke: not PGN, not its new owner Duke Energy, not Nuclear Electric Insurance Ltd. (NEIL). So maybe this nuke, only 160 miles from here, will be staying shut permanently? What say we do the same for the new nukes at Plant Vogtle, only 200 miles from here, before they even open?

John Downey wrote for the Charlotte Business Journal, Crystal River nuke plant stymies Duke Energy Utility facing penalties, high costs for repairs,

After two mediation sessions, Progress Energy Florida and its insurer haven't agreed how much of the potential repair costs for the utility's crippled Crystal River nuclear unit are covered.

It appears all but certain that Progress — a Duke Energy Corp. subsidiary — will have to pay millions of dollars as a penalty for failing to make a timely decision on whether to repair the plant.

Repair expenses have been calculated at between $1.5 billion and $3.4 billion, plus what it costs to buy power to replace what Crystal River would have produced while it is being repaired.

What kept shut Crystal River down from 2009 on was a concrete containment separation. Maybe those errors in pouring concrete at Plant Vogtle are Continue reading →

Vogtle nuclear reactor train wreck

Ever wondered what a nuclear reactor vessel looks like? Here’s one that’s literally a train wreck, on its way to Plant Vogtle on the Savannah River.

Rob Pavey wrote for the Augusta Chronicle 10 January 2013, Vogtle reactor vessel slips between Savannah, Burke County,

A 300-ton reactor vessel bound for Plant Vogtle was stranded briefly in south Georgia this week after a malfunction with the specially designed rail car moving the nuclear component from Savannah to Burke County. Workers examine a rail car that was transporting a 300-ton reactor vessel from the Port of Savannah to the Plant Vogtle nuclear site in Burke County. A misalignment between the cargo platform and the rail car caused the component to be returned to Savannah.

“The platform that contained the RV (reactor vessel) during transport became misaligned with the Schnabel railcar, so the railcar stopped immediately,” said Georgia Power Co. spokesman Mark Williams. “The platform and car were re-aligned the same day and safely returned to the port.”

The Schnabel railcar, which features extra axles that help distribute and support the weight of heavy objects, did not break, he said. Georgia Power would not divulge the location of the incident.

I wonder what the locals think. We’d ask them, if we knew where they were.

Well, that’s the only mishap so far, right?

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Help Sierra Club send a message to Georgia Power CEO Bowers

Georgia Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign probably contributed to Georgia Power’s recent decision to shut down some coal plants. Now Sierra Club offers a petition to ask Georgia Power CEO Paul Bowers to go farther, and replace those coal plants with solar offshore wind power for jobs and health for Georgia.

Dirty Coal is Out, Help Usher Clean Energy In!

Georgia Power recently announced their plans to retire three of their oldest and dirtiest coal fired power plants. Now, we must send a clear message to Georgia Power’s leadership that we want to keep Georgia Jobs by investing in homegrown clean energy and energy efficiency to power our homes and businesses.

Send a message to Georgia Power CEO Paul Bowers telling him to replace dirty coal with investments in homegrown clean energy and energy efficiency that can produce thousands of lasting Georgia jobs.

It’s a petition; details here.

Seth Gunning explained why in Sierra Club PR:

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Putting conservation into conservatives —John S. Quarterman

My op-ed in the VDT today. -jsq

Gov. Deal (WABE, 14 Nov 2012) temporarily forgot that “conservative” includes conserving something, like Theodore Roosevelt and national parks, or when Franklin D. Roosevelt established the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge which also administers Banks Lake, when Richard Nixon started the EPA, and when Jimmy Carter signed the Soil and Water Conservation Act. If Gov. Deal wants to call conservation “liberal”, I’m happy to be a liberal working for water for our state!

Georgia Water Coalition’s Dirty Dozen

listed the biggest boondoggle of all as #11: the nuclear reactors at Plant Vogtle suck up more water from the Savannah River than all local agriculture and almost as much as the city of Savannah.

If the new Plant Vogtle nukes are ever completed, all four will use more water than Savannah. In 2009 the legislature approved and Gov. Deal signed a law letting Georgia Power charge its customers in advance for building that boondoggle, to the tune of about $1.5 billion so far!

Let’s not forget

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Carbon bubble? Solar and wind erode coal, gas, and biomass credit quality —Moody’s

In Europe it’s already happening: solar and wind are causing bond-rater Moody’s to warn of downgrades of energy companies that depend on heat from burning coal, gas, or biomass. Moody’s earlier even warned the Bank of England of a potential carbon bubble developing. If combustion energy plants are affected like this, the credit effects will be even bigger on even-more-expensive nuclear plants, which Moody’s called a bet-the-farm risk way back in 2009.

James Murray wrote for businessGreen 6 Nov 2012, Moody’s: Renewables boom poses credit risk for coal and gas power plants: Credit ratings agency warns increases in renewable power have had ‘a profound negative impact’ on the competitiveness of thermal generation companies,

“Large increases in renewables have had a profound negative impact on power prices and the competitiveness of thermal generation companies in Europe,” said Scott Phillips, an assistant vice president and analyst at Moody’s Infrastructure Finance Group, in a statement.

“What were once considered stable companies have seen their business models severely disrupted and we expect steadily rising levels of renewable energy output to further affect European utilities’ creditworthiness.”

And not just rising, rising increasingly Continue reading →

Florida Crystal River nuke down $5 billion?

Only 160 miles from here, the Crystal River nuclear reactor continues to run up a bad bill, maybe as much as $5 billion, and even other nuclear operators are reportedly starting to turn against it. Should we wait for the new nukes on the Savannah River to run up a bill that high before we cancel them?

Remember back in May?

Florida is already experiencing a likely future for the new Plant Vogtle nukes in Georgia: completion date pushed back, and customer charges raised.

Yep, that’s the one. And the bill keeps going up, as Ivan Penn wrote for the Tampa Bay Times 30 December 2012, Utilities nationwide could share the financial pain of the idled Crystal River nuclear plant,

The crippled Crystal River nuclear plant is now America’s headache.

The bill to fix it and pay for replacement power may top $5 billion. The problem?

The company that insures all 104 U.S. nuclear power plants has just $3.6 billion on hand to pay for claims.

Broken nuclear plants in California, Texas and Michigan will vie for some of that money. But Crystal River alone represents such a financial threat that the insurance company, Nuclear Electric Insurance Ltd., may demand that its member utilities pony up more money.

Is NEIL the guarantor on the bonds for the new nukes at Plant Vogtle? I think Southern Company was smarter (for SO, not for us) and got Congress to guarantee those. If so, Continue reading →

Solar cars and charging stations: who wouldn’t?

Tired of Southern Company CEO Fanning’s maybe “next decade” for solar power? Tired of Georgia Power’s Bowers trying to push solar off for fifty years? Let’s hear from somebody who takes on big tasks and gets them done: Elon Musk, who’s already built a rocket that is resupplying the International Space Station, and who is also building all-electric cars.

Carl Hoffman wrote for Smithsonian magazine December 2012, Elon Musk, the Rocket Man With a Sweet Ride

When he’s not launching rockets, Musk is disrupting the notoriously obdurate automobile industry (see National Treasure, p. 42). While industry giants like Chevrolet and Nissan and Toyota were dithering with electric-gasoline hybrids, this upstart kid said he would design and manufacture an all-electric car that would travel hundreds of miles on a single charge. The Tesla Roadster hit the streets in 2008 with a range of 200 miles, and the far more functional Model S, starting at $57,000, was introduced in June. It’s the world’s first all-electric car that does everything my old gasoline version does, only better. The high-end model travels 300 miles on a single charge, leaps from zero to 60 in 5.5 seconds, slows from 60 to a dead stop in 105 feet, can seat up to five, has room for mulch bags and golf clubs, handles like a race car and its battery comes with an eight-year, 100,000-mile warranty. If you charged it via solar panels, it would run off the sun. One hundred a week are being produced in a former Toyota factory in Fremont, California, and nearly 13,000 people have put deposits on them….

And since that story: Continue reading →

Industrial Authority working for solar in south Georgia @ VLCIA 2012-12-18

The Industrial Authority is working to find locations for some of the 210 MW Georgia Power got the PSC to shift from biomass to solar back in September. That’s a good next step.

Jason Schaefer wrote for the VDT 23 Dec 2012, Solar power push has Authority working to establish connections,

Since the Georgia Public Service Commission (PSC) approved Georgia Allan Ricketts, Projects and Existing Industry Manager, VLCIA, 2012-12-18 Power Company’s plan Nov. 20 to add 210 megawatts of solar power to its electrical grid, the Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority has been devising strategies to draw solar energy producers to South Georgia.

Georgia Power will issue a Request for Proposals (RFP) from solar energy collection and production companies in early 2013, according to the PSC, and the company will contract with the lowest bidders to purchase their energy and place it on the Georgia Power electrical grid for public consumption.

Georgia Power plans to add 90 megawatts to its grid from distributed generation (small companies producing between 100 kilowatts and 1 megawatt), and 120 megawatts of large utility-scale projects producing up to 20 megawatts each. The company plans to price the solar energy at $0.13 per kWh for distributed generation and up to $0.12 per kWh for utility-scale projects, according to the PSC.

This government-approved commercial push for solar energy could be a boon to sunny South Georgia as well as the greater Valdosta area specifically, and the Authority is prepared to accommodate the solar energy producers they expect.

Andrew Schruijer, Executive Director, VLCIA, 2012-12-18 “I think there’s a very good possibility of solar energy coming to South Georgia,” Executive Director Andrea Schruijer said. “Possibly in the near future.”

There’s more in the VDT story. It’s pretty much what Col. Ricketts also told me after the VLCIA meeting Tuesday a week ago. He asked me if I knew what “distributed” meant. I pointed out Georgia Power’s version of distributed was actually not very distributed, compared to Continue reading →

Fracking: coming soon to a state near you?

Lest you think fracking is something that happens only in faraway places like Alberta or Pennsylvania, look at this map of North American shale gas basins, extending right through the Appalachians from Pennsylvania through West Virginia, Virginia, Tennessee, and North Carolina into Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi.

Source: Canada fracking creates ‘test tube‘ residents in B.C., Alberta,
by Lynn Herrmann for Digital Journal 5 January 2012.

How long before Georgia Power or Southern Company decide natural gas would be even cheaper if they fracked in Georgia or Alabama or Mississippi? How long until unavoidable human error starts fracking polluting our local groundwater and rivers? For that matter, isn’t it bad enough already that other people’s water is fracked for cheap gas in Georgia?

We could just get on with solar power, which doesn’t spill.

-jsq