Tag Archives: Renewable Energy

Decatur County already went from private prison to solar park

Decatur County, that’s turning an industrial park into a solar park; why is that county familiar? Because it’s the other county that thought it was getting a CCA private prison last year!

Decatur County has already moved on from that boondoggle that would have prisoners competing with local workers while not increasing local employment. Decatur County is already well along towards a solar park that could bring “400 hundred thousand a year in tax revenue”. Has our Industrial Authority got anything in negotiations for a solar park? How about our Airport Authority? And what is Georgia Power doing to help?

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West Point aiming for net zero energy use

U.S. Army is serious about solar, installing solar panels as a “very visible and a very recognizable part of our renewable energy initiative that can immediately click with the general public” as it makes its military academy net zero, while encouraging cadets to become renewable energy leaders. Hm, sounds like Decatur County with its solar industrial park and what we could do here with solar Lowndes High.

Mike Strasser wrote Army PR 29 November 2012, Solar panels deliver new energy to West Point’s Net Zero initiative,

The installation of solar panels on the roof of the Lichtenberg Tennis Center—780 panels, to be exact—in recent weeks represents West Point’s continuing efforts to achieve energy sustainability.

Since becoming a Net Zero Energy pilot installation last April, West Point has been making strides toward the ultimate goal of producing as much energy as it uses by 2020. According to an environmental assessment for the U.S. Army Environmental Command and West Point Garrison, the installation currently generates less than .02 percent of the energy it consumes from renewable sources. Matt Talaber, Department of Public Works engineer and director, said the solar panels will be a step in the right direction.

“The solar panels are very visible and a very recognizable part of our renewable energy initiative that can immediately click with the general public,” Talaber said. “It’s a positive image that shows West Point is interested in renewable energy and is working on its Net Zero energy goals.”

And they’re also improving conservation and efficiency. Plus this:

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Renewables are Winning, Nukes are Dead, and Coal is Crashing

Somebody is willing to read the sunshine writing: Renewables are Winning, Nukes are Dead and Coal is Crashing, as Kathleen Rogers and Danny Kennedy wrote for EcoWatch 14 Dec 2012.

As I wrote back in April when formerly coal-plotting Cobb EMC went solar:

Coal is dead. Nuclear is going down. Solar will eat the lunch of utilities that don’t start generating it.

Can Georgia Power and Southern Company (SO) read that handwriting on the wall? They can’t fight Moore’s Law, which has steadily brought the cost of solar photovoltaic (PV) energy down for thirty years now, and shows no signs of stopping. This is the same Moore’s Law that has put a computer in your pocket more powerful than a computer that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in 1982 and was used by an entire company. Solar PV costs dropped 50% last year. Already all the new U.S. electric capacity installed this September was solar and wind. As this trend continues, solar will become so much more cost-effective than any fossil or nuclear fuel power that nobody will be able to ignore it.

Rogers and Kennedy explained this phenomenon:

The seismic shift in how we all use cell phones and mobile technology to access the internet almost snuck up on the incumbent technologies and the monopolies that made money selling us landline telephones and a crappy service. Now, we’re all using apps on smartphones all of the time. So too, the shift to a scaled, solar-powered future built around the modular technology at the heart of solar power—the photovoltaic solar cell—will come as a surprise to many. We call it the solar ascent, and it is happening every day in a million ways.

Will SO and Georgia Power continue to prop up that 1973 legal wall that inhibits solar financing in Georgia? Companies and even economic development authorities are starting to find ways around it, and of course there’s Georgia Solar Utilities (GaSU) trying to wedge into the law as a utility. After Hurricane Sandy, rooftop solar for grid outage independence has suddenly hit the big time (Austin Energy caught onto that back in 2003). The U.S. military got solar and renewable energy back in Afghanistan and are now doing it bigtime everywhere.

SO and Georgia Power can try to ignore Continue reading →

Industrial park from green grass to a green solar future: Decatur County

Our Industrial Authority is in favor of solar business now; what if they seeded some of their industrial parks with solar panels like Decatur County is doing? They think it will make them look like a progressive county. What do we think?

Ty Wilson wrote for WTXL 7 Dec 2012, A solar park is coming to the Decatur County Industrial Park,

The Decatur County Industrial park will go from having green grass to having a green future.

A Lenexa, Kansas company is building a solar farm at the Decatur County Industrial Park.

The Decatur County Industrial park will go from having green grass to having a green future.

Keith Lyle is the chairman of the Bainbridge Decatur Development Authority, he says, “We are just extremely excited to have this come for the community.”

Decatur County Solar Park in solar Megawatt context And, it’s private investment!

Trade Winds Energy is leasing at least 100 acres to put in solar panels at ten thousand dollars a year.

Company executives says they will invest 17 million dollars into the project.

Lyle says, “This will add from the tax aspect a significant revenue stream. When it is all said and done you are looking at a taxable amount of 40 million is assets. On the project that is 400 hundred thousand a year in tax revenue.”

Trade Wind Energy doesn’t list this project yet (and all the projects they do list are wind projects), but if we take a rule of thumb Continue reading →

Rooftop solar for grid outage independence

Solar power can bring for energy independence, not just from foreign countries, also from the grid during storms and other outages.

Inspired by the need to deal with downed power lines in New York and New Jersey after Hurricane Sandy, David Crane and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wrote for NYTimes 12 Dec 2012, Solar Panels for Every Home,

Solar photovoltaic technology can significantly reduce our reliance on fossil fuels and our dependence on the grid. Electricity-producing photovoltaic panels installed on houses, on the roofs of warehouses and big box stores and over parking lots can be wired so that they deliver power when the grid fails.

Solar panels have dropped in price by 80 percent in the past five years and can provide electricity at a cost that is at or below the current retail cost of grid power in 20 states, including many of the Northeast states. So why isn’t there more of a push for this clean, affordable, safe and inexhaustible source of electricity?

First, the investor-owned utilities that depend on the existing system for their profits have little economic interest in promoting a technology that empowers customers to generate their own power. Second, state regulatory agencies and local governments impose burdensome permitting and siting requirements that unnecessarily raise installation costs.

I can tell you by experience that solar panels on the roof (with batteries) can supply power when the grid is out.

In regulatory-captured Georgia, the big impediment to solar is financing, because of 1973 Territorial Electric Service Act. When will Southern Company and Georgia Power admit their boondoogle on the Savannah River has failed and get on with conservation, efficiency, wind, and solar power?

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New biomass plant near Dublin, GA: what it’s really about

Not really about jobs, and not about feeding electricity into the grid: the new biomass plant near Dublin, GA is about saving that company money on electricity: but at what cost to the state and to local residents?

Mike Stucka wrote for Macon.com 6 December 2012, Deal announces $95 million biomass power plant for Laurens County,

A new biomass power plant announced Thursday is expected to bring hundreds of related jobs and a direct $95 million investment.

A statement from the office of Gov. Nathan Deal said the plant itself will bring 35 permanent jobs to Laurens County.

Compare 35 permanent jobs for $95 million to MAGE SOLAR’s 350 jobs for $30 million. That’s about $2,700,000 per job for this deal, vs. $85,714 per job for MAGE SOLAR. Which would make MAGE SOLAR’s facility more than 30 times more effective at producing permanent jobs.

OK, but what’s this one supposed to do?

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Financing solar energy: Georgia’s special problem

In most states, financing solar energy is largely a matter of learning all the local ropes. In Georgia, there’s a bigger problem.

Michael Mendelsohn wrote for RMI 5 December 2012, How Do We Lower Solar Installation Costs and Open the Market to Securitized Portfolios: Standardize and Harmonize,

Soft costs can be pretty tough. The cost of solar installations can be generally separated into “hard” costs — representing primary components such as modules, racking, inverters — and soft costs including legal, permitting, and financing. While the former group — particularly modules — have dropped dramatically over the last several years, the latter have not. According to a recent NREL analysis, these costs represent roughly 30% of both residential and utility installations (slightly less for commercial-host systems). See Figure 1.

In fact, soft costs are so critical to the overall success of solar adoption, their reduction is a primary focus of the Department of Energy’s SunShot Initiative to make solar energy cost-competitive. In order to reduce the cost of financing, NREL recently completed and continues to work on various efforts to tap public capital markets and enable other vehicles that securitize project portfolios.

We’ll come back to tapping public capital markets and the like, because that’s the key to what Georgia Solar Utilities (GaSU) is trying to do. But there’s a special problem in Georgia, buried in the next paragraph:

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Videos, Solar Energy Forum @ CSC 2012-12-01

Solar Energy Forum at Center for a Sustainable Coast, Savannah, Chatham County, Georgia, 1 December 2012 Here are videos of Saturday’s Solar Energy Forum at the Center for a Sustainable Coast (CSC) in Savannah, with

We will probably post more later on the presentations by Paul Wolff and Robert Green, and the ensuing questions and answers. Meanwhile, here’s a video playlist of the entire event:

Videos, Solar Energy Forum
Solar Energy Forum, Center for a Sustainable Coast (CSC),
Videos by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE),
Savannah, Chatham County, Georgia, 1 December 2012.

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Georgia statehouse and the anti-sustainability astroturf talking points (aka “Agenda 21”)

Somebody wrote me a week or two ago:

I saw in todays paper Chip Rogers and other Senate leadership was changed yesterday. Thank goodness!

Well, don't cheer too soon. According to Jim Galloway in the AJC 15 November 2012,

"Senate Majority Leader Chip Rogers of Woodstock withdrew his re-election bid and endorsed Ronnie Chance of Tyrone, the governor's floor leader, for the position."

Ronnie Chance is not only also ALEC, Chance is the other ALEC state Senator who put both the charter school amendment and the multi-year amendment on the ballot. Is this leadership "change" improvement? Meet the new boss; same as the old boss.

Why must we get fooled again? When will the people of the state of Georgia get tired of government by astroturf and elect some legislators who will represent the people?

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TV station gets it: Territoriality Law prevents solar in Georgia

Local TV is getting it about solar in Georgia, and what’s holding it back!

WSBTV.com posted 20 November 2012, Georgia law keeps power customers from saving with solar energy

Supporters say it could save some people big on their electric bills, but leasing solar panels in Georgia isn’t worth it because of a current state law.

Critics believe it gives Georgia Power a solar monopoly and prevents consumers from saving money.

Jeff Sain installed solar panels on his Dunwoody house because his electric bill was nearly $600 a month in the summer. With solar his Georgia Power bill plummeted.

“The first month’s power bill, I saved 91 percent on my power bill,” Sain said.

Purchasing solar panels required a big outlay of cash. Sain spent $32,000.

But companies in 14 states now offer systems that can be leased with no upfront costs. However, you get less in savings because you have split it with the leasing company providing the equipment.

“Typical savings if you lease panels as people do in other states will be 30 to 50 percent of your power bill,” Consumer advocate Clark Howard said.

The main law that prevents us getting financing for solar like in Continue reading →