“Corporate responsiblity,” answered Southern Company CEO Thomas A. Fanning
to questions about Kemper Coal from Linda St. Martin of Mississippians
For Affordable Energy.
I don’t think that word means what he thinks it means.
Ray Henry wrote for AP yesterday, Southern Co. CEO defends Miss. power project,
Continue readingDo nuclear reactors really deliver dependable baseload capacity? I hear industry execs say 99.99% uptime. The real average from seven years of NRC data for 104 reactors is 88.13%.
According to Power Reactor Status Reports
posted online by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission,
here are the actual percent power percentages over time
for the 104 listed nuclear power reactors.
The timeframe is 31 March 2006 through today, 21 May 2013.
(The NRC data appears to go back to 1999, but seven years
is a good sample to start with.)
The computation for each reactor is the sum of the uptime
percentages for each day divided by the number of days.
The total uptime is the sum of the reactor uptimes divided
by the number of reactors.
Here’s the list, sorted two ways:
Names of projects!
Lists of PR and marketing items!
Is this a new trend from our Industrial Authority?
Or will it be like
the last time I complimented them on an agenda with content
and was told later that one was an accident.
Here’s the agenda. Sure, the project names are codewords, but that’s how they talk to prospective companies without revealing all their cards to the competition. And this one has a name:
Georgia Power Company Advanced Solar Initiaitve (GPASI) Projects
Maybe we’ll hear more about those two megawatts of solar power. Maybe even more are scheduled for Lowndes County.
Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial AuthorityContinue reading
Agenda, Tuesday, May 21, 2013 5:30 p.m.
Industrial Authority Conference Room
2110 N. Patterson Street
How many of the distribution centers here have solar panels on top?
Or schools?
Or government buildings?
Or businesses?
None.
But sunny far-north-next-to-Canada Buffalo has them.
David Robinson wrote for Buffalo News 14 May 2013,
FedEx groundbreaking gives region bragging rights:
FedEx Trade Networks breaks ground on a new distribution center that development officials hope will lure more companies, jobs
FedEx Trade Networks began construction Tuesday on its new distribution center in the Town of Tonawanda, giving hope to local development officials that the company’s expansion will boost the Buffalo Niagara region’s efforts to become a distribution and logistics hub.
“It really drives home the value of this region as a center for logistics in the global economy,” said Kenneth Adams, president and chief executive officer of Empire State Development, the state’s main economic development agency.
“It plays to the inherent strength of the region,” Adams said. “There could be no better seal of approval for a logistics business in this location.”
We’ve got transportation and logistics and distribution centers here, but we don’t have this:
Fred Schardt, president of FedEx Trade Networks, said the environmental benefits of the company’s 14-acre site within the Riverview Solar Technology Park off River Road also were a selling point. “We understand the importance of doing business in an environmentally sustainable way. It’s very, very important for us,” he said. “This park allows this to happen.”
The FedEx building will include a 100-kilowatt solar array that will be integrated into the design of the structure. Those solar panels are expected to generate 1 million kilowatt-hours of electricity during the term of the company’s lease, reducing the company’s consumption of fossil fuels by the equivalent of 80,000 gallons of gasoline, Montante said.
If Buffalo, a thousand miles to the north with much less sun, can do this, we can, too. Maybe if we did this, maybe in some of VLCIA’s industrial parks, maybe it would attract more businesses….
-jsq
Other states, even New Jersey and far-north Michigan,
are beating Georgia to solar jobs.
Why isn’t sunny Georgia leading in one of the fastest-growing industries in the country that is deploying rural jobs everywhere else?
Hint: who’s
holding a shareholder meeting this month?
Carin Hall wrote for energydigital 13 May 2013, Solar Jobs Outnumber Texas Ranchers and US Coal Miners: New statistics show that solar is one of the fastest growing industries in the US, creating thousands of jobs across the country
There are now more solar energy workers in the state of Texas than there are ranchers, according to solar research group The Solar Foundation.
The group’s data mapping out solar jobs across the nation also showed that there are more solar jobs in California than actors, and more solar workers than coal miners nationwide. Sunny states like California and Arizona topped the list. Wyoming came in last, with just 50 workers, while Utah showed a mere 290 solar workers despite being one of the country’s sunniest states.
Even the states with less sunshine like New Jersey and Michigan showed a high number of solar jobs—thanks to favorable tax and regulatory policies that help attract developers to cope with high electricity prices.
New Jersey is #9 and Michigan is #15 according to
The Solar Foundation’s map of State Solar Jobs.
Where’s Georgia?
Number 41 in solar jobs per capita.
Yet Michigan is #47 by maximum solar resource and New Jersey is #36,
while Georgia is #18: much sunnier than those northern states.
Why is Georgia so far behind?
LEGAL STATUS OF THIRD-PARTY OWNERSHIP: NOT ALLOWED
Because of Continue reading
You can to talk to Southern Company
even if you can’t come to SO’s
annual stockholder meeting 22 May at Callaway Gardens.
Sierra Club helps you to ask SO CEO Thomas A. Fanning questions; maybe
about SO’s nuclear financial and safety performance,
or
why SO is already losing on its “clean coal” bet in Mississippi,
or
when SO might get serious about distributed solar power,
or
when SO will help Georgia join the Atlantic Offshore Wind Energy Consortium,
or….
So many possible questions, and you don’t even have to go to ask them!
Sierra Club message to Southern Company,
Tell Southern Company to Move Beyond Coal,
On May 22, Southern Company will host its annual shareholder meeting in Georgia, giving us a great opportunity to push them forward on clean energy.
Southern Company has taken steps to grow clean energy in the Southeast — Alabama Power and Georgia Power both invested in wind energy and Georgia power increased solar energy investments — but they can do a lot more.
Southern Company still provides some of the dirtiest, most unreliable, dangerous, and expensive power in the country. And its subsidiaries continue to place “Big Bets” on dirty coal electricity that poisons the health of our communities’ water, air, and families. Georgia is even home to the biggest emitter of carbon pollution in the nation, Scherer Plant in Juliette.
Send a message to Southern Company’s CEO Tom Fanning to thanking him for clean energy investments, and demand that Southern Company clean up its act and invest in job creating clean energy.
Follow the link to send a message.
-jsq
When Goldman Sachs gets in, you know there’s money in solar. They’re certainly not investing half a billion dollars for your health. Of course, if you’re in Georgia, you won’t be getting any of this 110 MW of SolarCity solar on your roof, because of that antique 1973 Territorial Electric Service Act that Georgia Power and Southern Company keep propping up. Maybe we should do something about that. -jsq
Continue reading
SAN MATEO, Calif., and NEW YORK, May 16, 2013—SolarCity (Nasdaq: SCTY), a leading provider of clean energy, today announced a lease financing agreement with Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS) to fund more than $500 million in solar power projects; an estimated 110 megawatts in generation capacity for homeowners and businesses.
The financing makes it possible for homeowners, businesses, government and other non-profit organizations to install solar panels with no upfront cost and pay less for clean electricity than they currently pay for utility bills. The agreement was initiated in 2012 and expanded per
Two more victories for anti-nuke activists:
San Onofre restart decision pushed back at least until June,
and webcasts of California Public Utilities Commission hearings going on right now.
Abby Sewell reported for the L.A. Times yesterday, Decision on San Onofre pushed back to June at the earliest,
The plant’s operator Southern California Edison had hoped at one point to have one of the plant’s two units operating by summer, but NRC Chairwoman Allison Macfarlane made it clear that will not happen.
Macfarlane told reporters Tuesday after a speech, “You know, the process is very complicated now. Almost every day it gets a little more complicated…. Right now I can tell you a decision on restart won’t happen until the end of June, certainly after the middle of June.
“It may get pushed back later,” she said. “I don’t know.”
She didn’t say much about the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board (ASLB) decision to require NRC public hearings before any decision on restarting San Onofre, but she did say this:
Continue readingValdosta has a larger solar installation than Nashville, Tennessee, but Valdosta’s is hidden away at the Mud Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant while Nashville’s biggest is on its new Music City Center. Which do you think shows the most leadership, and will attract the most business?
In Lightwave Solar’s May 2013 newsletter,
LightWave Completes Music City Center Solar Project,
LightWave Solar recently completed the installation of a 211 kilo-watt (kW) solar system for the Music City Center, and it is the largest solar installation in Nashville.
Installed within the guitar shaped structure on the roof, the system consists of 845 solar panels and four inverters weighing 1,800 pounds each. The system will generate approx. 271,000 kilowatt-hours per year, enough electricity to power the electric vehicle charging stations and lighting for the building. Over 25 years, the clean electricity will offset nearly 5,000 tons of carbon dioxide emissions, the equivalent of taking 920 cars off the road.
“This project shows great leadership on behalf of the city,” said Steve Johnson, President of LightWave Solar. “We applaud the mayor’s vision in making Nashville a more sustainable city with a bright future.”
And leadership can extend even beyond solar into water and habitat:
Continue reading
Maybe the ASLB was referring to some other NRC that should hold public
hearings?
The Atomic Safety and Licensing Board (ASLB) agreed with Friends
of the Earth (FOE) when it ruled that
restarting either San Onofre unit requires a full public hearing
like a trial, but the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) interprets
that as having nothing to do with its own staff decision process.
This is after the city of Los Angeles (and numerous other
southern California cities and the San Diego Unified School District)
said it didn’t want any
decision about restarting any San Onofre reactor/ without a full,
transparent, public decision process.
The L.A. Times says all this is creating “confusion”.
Just last week I heard Georgia Power CEO Paul Bowers say confusion
was bad for business.
Maybe it will be bad not just for Southern California Edison and its
San Onofre nukes, but also for Georgia Power and Southern Company’s
19-month-late and billion-over-budget nuclear boondoggle at Plant Vogtle.
Abby Sewell wrote for the L.A. Times yesterday 7:24 PM, San Onofre ruling creates confusion,
Continue reading