It’s not just us gnats anymore, Southern Company now has yellowflies
giving it the business about converting from fossil fuels to renewable energy.
That’s smart business, since SO
called out solar power in its own 2014 Annual Report
for increased revenues in both 2013 and 2014.
Tomorrow at Callaway Gardens, stockholders including me will vote.
Dave Williams, Atlanta Business Chronicle, 15 May 2015, Southern shareholders to consider ‘green’ vote, Continue reading
This Memorial Day let’s honor those who have served and those who have fallen
by getting on with removing one of the major causes of war:
fossil fuels.
The U.S. military is putting its money where its mouth is in buying
solar power.
Especially now that
HB 57 is law and enables solar financing,
the rest of us can do the same.
And that will prevent casualties and prevent wars.
WTOC Staff, 15 May 2015, Ft. Stewart breaks ground on renewable energy solar project,
There will be nearly 140,000 solar panels covering about 200 acres. Georgia Power owns and operates the solar panels, and all of the energy generated will go to Georgia Power to be equally distributed to people across the region who use Georgia Power, including MidCoast Regional Airport, Fort Stewart, and any other residential customers.
“Let me put a little bit into perspective; so the Army is the largest utility consumer in the United States, we buy more utility services than anyone else, even WalMart,” Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army Richard Kidd said.
Why is the U.S. military doing this? Continue reading
The sun is finally rising on Georgia, and if that is possible, Florida can follow, and the southeast, the U.S., and the world.
Today is a historic day, when even a governor
who took campaign finance funds from
a long list of fossil fuel pipeline companies,
the governor of the most corrupt state
(least stringent ethics laws),
when that governor
finally signed a law that even the
most corruption-prone legislature,
after squelching similar bills for a dozen years,
finally passed as HB 57 unanimously in both houses.
Dave Williams, Atlanta Business Chronicle, 12 may 2015, Gov. Deal signs bill letting solar installers offer customers third-party financing,
Georgia property owners will get more affordable options for installing solar panels at their homes and businesses under a bill Gov. Nathan Deal signed into law Tuesday.
The legislation, which sailed through the General Assembly unanimously, will let solar installers offer customers third-party financing of installations. That’s a major change from the old law, which required customers to pay up front.
Already two years ago the Georgia Public Service Commissioners, even though overwhelmingly campaign-funded by the industries they regulate, required Georgia Power to buy twice as much solar energy as it wanted. This year Georgia Power’s parent Southern Company’s annual report says its main source of new revenue for both 2013 and 2014 was solar power. And Georgia has already leaped from far behind to become the fastest growing solar market in the nation, with numerous Georgia Power solar utility-scale installations and smaller ones like for Alton Burns in Thomas County and today for George Bennett in Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia. This new law Gov. Deal just signed will accelerate that growth even more.
Luis Martinez, NRDC, 12 May 2015, The Sun Also Rises in the Southeast, Continue reading
Power generation for both traditional electricity uses and transportation
is changing.
Michael Liedtke and Jonathan Fahey wrote for AP and Inc. 1 May 2015, Elon Musk Unveils Tesla’s Ambitious New Home Battery System: “Our goal here is to fundamentally change the way the world uses energy,” Musk told reporters gathered in Hawthorne, California.
The batteries are likely to become more useful if, as expected, more utilities and regulators allow Continue reading
First of
three 30 MW military solar projects in Georgia,
the other two ag
Fort Gordon near Augusta and Fort Stewart near Savannah,
plus
a fourth one at Kings Bay Submarine Base.
The U.S. military has long recognized
fossil fuels are vulnerable supply chains that risk national security,
and U.S. DoD is doing something about it.
Brennan Reh, wrbl.com, 17 April 2105, Ft. Benning solar power project groundbreaking
Fort Benning held a groundbreaking ceremony for the U.S. Army’s renewable energy solar project. Georgia Power is building solar panels that will cover 200 acres on the post.
The solar project on Fort Benning will be the army’s largest power project in Georgia.
The panels will generate Continue reading
Solar power made much of SO’s increased energy revenues for 2013 and 2014. What else will we learn at the Southern Company 2015 Annual Meeting of Shareholders, Wednesday, May 27, 2015? Has Southern Company finally looked up, and will it say, like Thomas Alva Edison in 1931, “I’d put my money on the sun and solar energy”?
To attend the SO shareholder meeting you have to have owned stock by Monday, March 30, 2015, or you’ll need to get somebody to appoint you their proxy. Since I’m an SO stockholder, I got the 216-page Southern Company Notice of 2015 Annual Meeting of Stockholders, Proxy Statement and 2014 Annual Report, page D-8:
In 2014, wholesale revenues increased $329 million, or 17.7%, as compared to the prior year due to a $326 million increase in energy revenues and a $3 million increase in capacity revenues. The increase in energy revenues was primarily related to increased revenue under existing contracts as well as new solar PPAs and requirements contracts primarily at Southern Power, Continue reading
Friday’s vote started at least a year and a half ago. Organized years-long activism is paying off for everyone.
Summer before last, after statewide requests by Georgia Sierra Club, Greenlaw, and many others: Georgia PSC required Georgia Power to buy twice
as much solar power.
About a year later, Mary Landers, Savannahnow, 18 November 2014, Georgia is fastest growing solar market,
Last year the Georgia Public Service Commission approved a motion for Georgia Power, the state’s largest utility, to add 525 MW of solar power generation to its portfolio by 2016.
“That pushed out the growth of solar, especially projecting forward,” Continue reading
Decatur County scores two big solar projects. When will Lowndes County get a move on in solar? How about some projects like this at your empty industrial parks, Valdosta-Lowndes Development Authority? Now that even Southern Company CEO Tom Fanning is bragging about renewable energy, maybe the solar sun is shining enough for other local governments to see it.
Southern Company PR, PRnewsWire, 20 February 2015, Southern Company subsidiary acquires two Georgia solar projects totaling 99 megawatts,
Southern Company subsidiary Southern Power today announced the acquisition of two photovoltaic (PV) solar projects totaling 99 megawatts (MW) in Georgia — the 80-MW Decatur Parkway Solar Project and the 19-MW Decatur County Solar Project — from Tradewind Energy, Inc.
The projects were proposed by Continue reading
Elon Musk’s recent reminder that Tesla is working on a house-sized battery has caused quite a stir, but not enough. Tesla alone isn’t the significant part: Tesla opening a market for inexpensive home solar storage methods is. And not all those methods will be batteries: also coming are capacitors, organic vats, compressed air, and water pumped up towers, for storage to car- and house- size to municipal- and utility-scale, all of which will drive solar and wind deployment even faster.
John McDuling, QZ, 30 July 2014, How solar energy storage could make Tesla much more than an automaker,
How lucrative could the solar energy storage business be for Tesla? Almost as lucrative as selling cars.
That’s according to Morgan Stanley, which this week Continue reading
Batteries are just one of many reasons, including electric vehicles, smart grid, solar and wind power (including pass HB 57 and you can profit by getting financing for your own solar panels), plus massive savings on health care and electricity bills; batteries are one of many reasons that fixing climate change will save us all money, clean up our air and water, expand our forests, preserve property rights, and make some people rich:
In fact, a recent report suggests that revenue from the distributed energy storage market — meaning battery packs and other storage devices located directly at homes and businesses (many of which now generate electricity through solar) — could exceed $16.5 billion by 2024. Another report predicts $68 billion in revenue in the same time frame from the grid-scale storage market. This includes large-scale battery packs, hydro-storage systems that use cheap abundant electricity to pump water uphill to drive turbines later on, or even solar thermal systems that store energy as heat in molten salt.
And it’s all happening fast, so fast your jaw will drop if you’re not paying attention. So let’s stop talking about the costs of fixing climate change. It’s not just no-cost and free, not just in the future but right now; we’re all actually going to be better off through fixing climate change: healthier and more prosperous.
Sami Grover wrote Continue reading