Tag Archives: History

How Much Wind and Solar Capacity Would a Billion Dollars Buy?

Those cost overruns so far on the new nukes? How much solar and wind could that money buy?

John Hanger wrote on his Facts of the Day today, $913 Million Construction Overrun Hits Georgia New Nukes: How Much Gas, Wind, Solar Capacity Would That Buy?

Comparing the Vogtle initial $913 million cost overrun to the capital costs of gas, wind, and solar plants show just how big these cost overruns can be. The Vogtle $913 million cost overrun by itself could have paid for approximately 1,000 megawatts of natural gas generation; 450 megawatts of wind power; and 330 megawatts of solar power.

Don’t forget that’s just the first cost overruns on those nukes. When the current Plant Vogtle nukes were built, there were supposed to be four at a cost of $660 million; only two were built, at a cost of $8.87 billion. That’s a cost overrun of 1300%. How much solar and wind could $8 billion buy?

Moreover, gas, wind, and solar generation could be up and running in 3-years or less from the first day to the last day of development, as opposed to the 10 years or more needed to build a nuclear plant.

Austin Energy’s new 30 MW solar farm, for example, approved beginning of 2009, opened end of 2011, and cost less than originally projected.

Oh, and solar doesn’t leak radioactive tritium like Plant Hatch and won’t get shut down two days after an NRC clean bill of health like Plant Vogtle.

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Cost overruns already starting for Georgia Power’s new nukes

Remember how Georgia Power customers get to pay for cost overruns on the new nukes? Well, the overruns have already started.

JoAnn Merrigan wrote for WSAV 15 May 2012, Environmental Groups: Plant Vogtle Reactors Almost One Billion Over Budget,

A group of nine national environmental groups says that the two new nuclear reactors being built at Plant Vogtle (near Waynesboro in eastern Georgia) are over budget by up to $1 billion dollars. The opponents say Georgia Power’s share of the cost overruns is currently $400 million and that may cost ratepayers as well as taxpayers who are guranteeing loans in the billions of dollars.

The nine environmental groups, Friends of the Earth, Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League, Center for a Sustainable Coast, Citizens Allied for Safe Energy, Georgia Women’s Action for New Directions, NC WARN, Nuclear Information and Resource Service, and Nuclear Watch South, are also suing:

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Citizen Right Denied Quitman-Brooks County Board of Education —George Boston Rhynes

Received today. -jsq

On May 8th, 2012; at 6:00 PM, I (GEORGE BOSTON RHYNES) was denied the right to address the Quitman-Brooks County School Board of Education. Please not that this was at a public meeting in the State of Georgia under our form of government.

May 14, 2012
George Boston Rhynes
(229-251-8645)
5004 Oak Drive
Valdsota, Georgia 31605


TO: Brooks County School Board of Education
     &nbsp(229-263-7532)
      President Brad Shealy
       School Superintendent Debra H. Folsom
       Board Member Robert Lawrence Cunningham III
       Board Member Mr. Wayne Carroll Jr.,
       Board Member Mr. Gerald Golden
       Board Member Mr. Joseph Luke Mitchell
       Board Member Ms. Dennis Monroe
       Board Member Mr. Frank Thomas
       PO Box 511
      1081 Barwick Road
      Quitman, Georgia 31643

Moreover, my request was to speak before all members of the school board, parents, local press and others that attends such meetings. However, after three e-mails and several phone calls I was denied this right in the State of Georgia; as a Brooks County Family tax paying property owner.

I served my country for over 20 years and have been involved in civil and human righs since 1975 but have never seen such ill treatment of a United States Citizen wherein it is so diffuculy to address ELECTED and/ SELECTED officials within a state. I did not have this much trouble addressing a military school in Ramstein, Germany.

Again my family owns property in Brooks County (43 acreamust) as you will hear on the video below. However this did not matter to the Brooks County President Brad Shealy and those that get requests to address the school board in Quitman and Brooks County Georgia.

I can (only) imagine

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Who voted for Georgia Power’s nuke rate hike (CWIP)?

Who voted for that Nuclear Construction Cost Recovery Rider that appears on your Georgia Power bill, charging you for electricity you won't get from the new plant Vogtle nukes for years?

Project Vote Smart has lists of Yeas and Nays for that Construction Work in Progress (CWIP) charge, which was in 2009’s SB 31, "Energy Rate Increases to Finance Nuclear Power Plant Construction".

Compliments to all who voted Nay to this stealth tax that is slowing down deploying renewable energy in Georgia, delaying the solar and wind clear path to jobs and energy independence. Georgia Power customers can also vote against CWIP with their bill payments.

First let's look at our local delegation:

DistrictWhoPartyVoted
8Sen. Tim GoldenTurncoatYea
174Rep. Ellis BlackTurncoatYea
175Rep. Amy CarterTurncoatYea
176Rep. Jay ShawDemocraticYea

Every one of our local delegation voted for the CWIP rate hike. Here "Turncoat" as a party indicates they were Democrats at the time, but since got re-elected as a Democrat in 2010 and then became Republicans after the election. Democrat Jay Shaw did not run again. His son Jason Shaw ran as a Republican and won. Project Vote Smart is a bit confused by that, and by the party switching, so I've corrected those points in these lists.

Why do the Yeaers want to let Georgia Power charge its customers for electricity they won't get for years, if ever?

Also, notice every Democratic and one Republican co-sponsor of SB-31 is out of office.

Don Balfour (GA – R)
J.B. Powell (GA – D) (Out Of Office)
Chip Rogers (GA – R)
Mitchell W. 'Mitch' Seabaugh (GA – R) (Out Of Office)
Ed Tarver (GA – D) (Out Of Office)
Thorborn 'Ross' Tolleson Jr. (GA – R)

Hm, maybe voting for that nuke boondoggle wasn't good politics….

Here are the complete lists of votes on SB 31 for Senate and House. In the House list there's former Speaker Glenn Richardson not voting! And now he and former Governor Roy Barnes are suing Georgia Power about CWIP.

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FERC and energy demand response

Beyond a smart grid to mix and match the supply solar and wind to get rid of any need for new coal or nuclear plants, as FERC Chairman Jon Wellinghoff recommended three years ago, FERC also has plans to mix and match demand. Energy customers can volunteer to shut off their air conditioners or clothes dryers automatically if there’s not enough supply. This could facilitate adding solar power, by basically acknowledging that it may not always supply a fixed capacity.

Todd Griset wrote for law firm PretiFlaherty 23 April 2012, FERC seeks demand response standards,

Demand response, an innovative strategy to ensuring the integrity of electric grids, is growing in popularity, prompting federal regulators to consider standardizing how demand response performance is measured.

Managing an electric grid entails ensuring a constant balance between electric generation and customer demand for electricity. As customer demand rises, grid operators have traditionally called on more and more generating units. In most markets, grid operators dispatch the lowest-cost units first to keep overall costs down. As a result, generating units needed to meet peak demand tend to be more expensive than baseload generation. Many peaking units also emit more pollutants per unit of energy than baseload units.

In a demand response program, customers can volunteer to be available to reduce their load during times of peak demand. When done right, this reduction in customer demand can play much the same role as dispatching additional generation, but at a lower cost in dollars and environmental impacts. Energy efficiency resources can also play a similar role.

The U.S. Congress and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission have both recognized that demand response can be a decentralized, crowd-sourced alternative to peaking power plants. Utilities and regional transmission organizations across the nation are implementing demand response programs.

Across the nation…. How about it, Georgia Power, and Georgia EMCs? How are your demand response programs coming?

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FERC Chairman: baseload outdated; no new nukes needed; go sun and wind

Power companies’ main stated objection to solar or wind is that they are not “capacity” or “baseload” generation because sometimes the sun does not shine and the wind does not blow. And those utilities are required by various state, regional Energy Regulatory Commissions right up to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to supply capacity or baseload power. That’s their main excuse for coal and nuclear plants. Well, the Chairman of FERC thinks we may not need baseload, nor any new coal nor nuclear plants, either.

Noelle Straub and Peter Behr wrote for ScientificAmerican 22 April 2009, Will the U.S. Ever Need to Build Another Coal or Nuclear Power Plant? The new chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission doesn’t think so

No new nuclear or coal plants may ever be needed in the United States, the chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission said today.

“We may not need any, ever,” Jon Wellinghoff told reporters at a U.S. Energy Association forum.

So what will we need?

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Ocilla prison nearly sold at auction: better due diligence would be a good idea

A business our Industrial Authority wanted to get us into still risks bankrupting Irwin County: a private prison. Maybe we should do better due diligence around here and invest in better business ventures.

AP reported 23 April 2012, South Ga. detention center nearly sold at auction,

A privately owned detention center that houses hundreds of illegal immigrants in south Georgia is struggling with finances, and narrowly avoided being auctioned this year.

How bad is it?

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Fixing the illusion of certainty in Georgia Power’s decision-making

Why is it so hard to get a company like Georgia Power or The Southern Company to get on with solar and wind power for clean energy, for national energy independence, and, most importantly to such corporations, for their own profit? Why instead do they keep investing in coal and natural gas and wasting our tax and customer dollars on nuclear financial boondoggles? Why did Cobb EMC back new coal plants until they had their nose rubbed in national shame about corruption and do nothing about solar until their shareholders revolted and changed a majority of their board? We don’t even need to wait for that forensic audit the new Cobb EMC board wants to get the big picture. Such companies consider what they’re used to to be low risk, and anything new to be risky. Why are they so stodgy, and how do we change that?

These companies have many decades of experience with coal and natural gas, so they consider them less financially risky. (Details like neighbors dying disproportionately from cancer cost a little bit to buy up property, but that’s nothing compared to readily predictable profits.) Even nuclear such companies consider not risky to them, since they’ve got the federal government and their own customers guaranteeing all the financial risk through Construction Work in Progress charges on their bills for power they’re not even receiving from the new nukes and agreement from Georgia PSC that cost overruns like those caused by concrete sinking into the dirt can be passed on to the customers.

Neal Stephenson wrote for World Policy Journal September 2011, Innovation Starvation,

The illusion of eliminating uncertainty from corporate decision-making is not merely a question of management style or personal preference. In the legal environment that has developed around publicly traded corporations, managers are strongly discouraged from shouldering any risks that they know about—or, in the opinion of some future jury, should have known about—even if they have a hunch that the gamble might pay off in the long run. There is no such thing as “long run” in industries driven by the next quarterly report. The possibility of some innovation making money is just that—a mere possibility that will not have time to materialize before the subpoenas from minority shareholder lawsuits begin to roll in.

But if the old ways turn out to be suddenly risky, change can come. Funny how Cobb EMC changed its tune after subpeonas started raining down for its former CEO Dwight Brown. Sure, he got off on a technicality, but it turns out Cobb EMC shareholders didn’t like Continue reading →

ALEC, bills to ditch renewable energy, and the Southern Company

Got caught promoting laws that encourage people to kill people? Double down on laws to kill people through pollution! That’s what ALEC is doing. And look who’s apparently a member of ALEC: the Southern Company, parent of Georgia Power, and proprieter of several of the largest and dirtiest coal plants in the country.

Brian Merchant wrote for Treehugger Tuesday, Two ALEC Campaigns Exposed: One Kills Renewables, One Boosts Fracking,

After major corporations like Pepsi, Kraft, Proctor & Gamble, and Coke all ditched the rightwing group, ALEC announced that it would Plant Scherer abandon its drive to enact gun and voter ID laws. The group’s decision came after a couple high profile campaigns were launched decrying ALEC’s involvement in passing the ‘stand your ground’ laws.

But the group is actually stepping up its efforts in other arenas, as I noted last week. And two new reports, one from ProPublica, the other from DeSmogBlog, outline its new aims: dismantle legislation that incentivizes renewable energy generation, and preserve loopholes that allow natural gas companies to keep the chemical cocktails in their fracking fluids secret from the public.

This is the same ALEC that promotes laws like Georgia’s HB 87 that lock up more people to benefit private prison companies like CCA, which wanted to build a private prison on Lowndes County, Georgia. Traficking in human beings is not too sordid for ALEC, so poisoning people through polution doesn’t seem surprising.

Hm, let’s look at the corporate membership of ALEC, as collected by Sourcewatch’s ALEC Exposed. Why there’s The Southern Company, parent of Georgia Power! I’m frankly a little surprised Continue reading →

ALEC “covers the spectrum in terms of bad policy for people” –FL news

ALEC will no doubt try to tar WCTV as “liberal media.” That will be amusing!

Troy Kinsey wrote for WCTV Monday, themselves as members of ALEC. Damien filer with ‘progress florida’ says its time for them to break their ties with a group that’s taking national heat over ‘Stand Your Ground’.

“This is not just about ‘shoot first’ laws; this is about everything from the so-called ‘parent trigger’ law that we saw during the last legislative session, the prison privatization schemes that we’ve seen crop up. It really covers the spectrum in terms of bad policy for people, and policy that’s really aimed at padding the pockets of the corporations that fund this organization.”

Hm, I wonder who in the Georgia statehouse are ALEC members?

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