Here's
a video playlist
of the Candidate Forum last night organized by the 30 Club at Serenity Church.
Probably more commentary later; for now, in the interests of speed, just the raw videos.
Candidates Forum, 30 Club,
J.D. Rice, President
Video by John S. Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE),
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 22 October 2012.
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After
he spoke at last Thursday’s Political Forum,
David Staples said something interesting out in the hall and I asked
him to repeat it for the video camera.
Here’s the video, followed by a transcript.
Video by John S. Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE),
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 18 October 2012.
I think right now we need to look at solar. The two new nuclear reactors probably shouldn’t be built right now. You look at the wholesale power rate curves, and where it’s most expensive, and it’s during peak hours. Wholesale power is 50 cents a kilowatt-hour, and the electric companies are buying at wholesale rates, What do we need to offset that with? We’ve got something to do that with: solar. The cost has come so far down that that’s something we should be spending our money on rather than than building nuclear reactors right now.
Solar PV costs
dropped 50% last year.
Southern Company’s new nukes continue to run farther over budget.
If Denmark can do it maybe Southern Company and Georgia Power should stop manufacturing buggy whips and help get Georgia on the solar train.
Staples is on record for solar and as he says ethics matter: all the incumbent GA PSC members have taken campaign donations from people closely associated with the industries they regulate, (including Stan Wise) and Staples has apparently only accepted donations from clean sources.
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According to Ted Terry,
We are the first PSC campaign in over a decade to go up on the broadcast airwaves!
Here’s the video:
About those rate hikes: Georgia Power hikes prices for gas and nuclear, then complains about solar and We can charge you even if it’s cancelled! —CWIPped Georgia Power
Steve Oppenheimer is on the record as wanting more energy efficiency and renewable energy (including solar energy).
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Here’s a single video of this morning’s entire Lowndes County Commission Work Session. The railroad item was neither of the ones on which I was speculating. The animal shelter wants a 24 hour “cooling-off period” with a submitted animal kept at home before “evaluation” by the shelter. The Tax Commissioner wants to refund some taxes they apparently accidentally overcharged. The Fire Chief has bids for equipment for the new fire truck. And there’s going to be an animal health fair. They vote tomorrow evening at 5PM.
Here’s the video, followed by the agenda, with links to the relevant parts of the video, and a few notes.
Video of 6 minute meeting
Work Session, Lowndes County Commission (LCC),
Video by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE),
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 22 October 2012.
Thanks to Dexter Sharper for use of his video camera.
Here’s the annotated agenda:
Continue reading
An excellent article about the problems with Georgia Power’s
new nukes on the Savannah River gets at something you may not know:
they can charge you for them even if they’re cancelled!
Steve Willis wrote for the Georgia Sierran Oct./Nov./Dec. 2012 page 5, Overruns, Uncertainty Plague Vogtle Expansion,
If Southern Company abandons this project, the CWIP law not only allows Southern Company to keep all of the CWIP payments legally extorted from customers, but allows them to keep CWIP fees in place or even increase them until all their costs and profits have been fully recovered. Due to the run-away cost overruns, the CWIP charge on your monthly bill is already more than three times what Southern Company confidently claimed it would be at this time when they presented their case to “your” Georgia legislature in 2009.
And that 2009 legislature rubberstamped CWIP so it appears on your Georgia Power bill as Nuclear Construction Cost Recovery Rider. Willis reminds us that the 2 nukes already at Plant Vogtle were projected to be four nukes for $600 million and ended up being two for $9 billion.
Continue readingEveryone has heard the saying “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.” If the Vogtle expansion costs balloon, as many analysts expect, it will cost
Back in February,
Georgia Power argued that a free market in solar power would cause
price increases.
Yet they already increased prices for natural gas and
for nuclear plants that won’t produce electricity for years, if ever,
and are already massively overbudget and behind schedule.
Why should we believe them about solar when it’s their archaic projects
they already
are deploying that already have increased customer prices?
In February, Greg Roberts of Georgia Power argued,
Another reason is that the customers of Georgia Power, Georgia’s
EMC’s and Municipal Electric Authority of Georgia are paying for the poles and wires to transmit power, and the back-up generation to cover the electricity needs when the sun isn’t shining. These costs will have to be recovered from other customers not getting the privileged deal from the developer, raising everyone else’s rates.
While there are already numerous federal and state tax and other incentives for solar development in Georgia, it is still much more costly than the service provided by utilities. But what if third-party solar developers could get other electric customers in Georgia to foot the bill? That would be the result of this legislation.
It’s like asking Sally’s Café to pay the electric bill of Joe’s Cafe across the street, thus allowing Joe to undercut Sally’s prices.
Georgia Power well knows they could take a percentage of any power transmitted through their lines, so that wires and poles and backup generation argument is ludicrous. And as far as subsidies, how about this one, Georgia Power, Get the Facts, Investing in Georgia’s Energy Future:
Continue readingFive minutes? Or will they discuss any of the four items on the agenda for Monday morning’s Work Session?
What’s the CSX project?
Is it this item from
the T-SPLOST constrained project list?
RC11-000071 Construction of St Augustine Road Overpass
That overpass went from $12,000,000 to $14,627,933.04 during the T-SPLOST selection process. On the ground down there on St. Augustine Road it sure looks like people are preparing for an overpass. Has the county found some non-T-SPLOST way to fund that railroad overpass?
Since it’s CSX, I’d guess it’s not this other T-SPLOST project:
RC11-000077 Georgia and Florida Railway (GFRR) — Valdosta to Willacoochee Rehabilitation
The Commission could just post the proposed agreement along with the agenda, and then we’d all know.
LOWNDES COUNTY BOARD OF COMMISSIONERSContinue reading
PROPOSED AGENDA
WORK SESSION, MONDAY, OCTOBER 22, 2012, 8:30 a.m.
REGULAR SESSION, TUESDAY, OCTOBER 23, 2012, 5:30 p.m.
327 N. Ashley Street — 2nd Floor
SPLOST VII’s $22 million for a new library and parks and rec goes about 2/3 for the library and 1/3 for parks and rec, and the latter doesn’t all go to parks and rec at Five Points, according to a mysterious red-letter note that has sprung up on the Lowndes County website.
The front page of lowndescounty.com has sprouted this undated and unsigned clarification under the SPLOST VII heading:
Exhibit A (Please note that the $22 million proposed by Lowndes County for the Library and Parks & Recreation, represents a division of approximately $14.5 million for the Library and approximately $7.5 million for Parks & Recreation. In addition, the $7.5 million proposed for Parks & Recreation is not allocated for parks and improvements at the 5-Points site. Parks & Recreation will use these funds for improvements in other areas of the county.)
Exhibit A is the list of projects and estimated costs that includes this item:
- payment of bond debt for acquisition and construction of and equipping a new library facility and parks and recreation facilities
$ 22,000,000
Can somebody explain why the new library and Parks and Rec were lumped together in the first place? At least the county is sort of trying to explain the difference now.
They didn’t include the pie chart with their clarification.
I made the pie chart; took about Continue reading
David A. Staples
running for the Georgia Public Service Commission for District 5,
talked about the ethical conflicts of the incumbents who take
almost all of their campaign contributions from people associated
with the utilities they regulate.
Then he mentioned that the new nuclear reactors Georgia Power
is building for Southern Company at Plant Vogtle
have
another $3.5 billion in cost overruns coming.
This is after the PSC incumbents just rubberstamped the Vogtle budget in August, and on top of the $900 million in cost overruns we already knew about. That $900 million was already more than 6% of the originally-projected $14 billion total cost. If it’s now $3.5 + $0.9 = $4.4 billion, that’s more than 31% over the original total. Maybe we should vote in some PSC members and legislators who will stop this nonsense.
Here’s the video:
Continue reading
Chris Beckham announced at the end of
last night’s political forum
that 4,460 people have voted in Lowndes County as of 5PM yesterday.
That’s up from
2,861 by end of Tuesday.
Here’s the video:
4,460 have voted early in Lowndes County —Chris Beckham
Candidates Forum, The Home Builders Association of South Georgia (HBA),
Video by John S. Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE),
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 18 October 2012.
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