Tag Archives: Southern Company

GaSU wins at GA PSC, but will GaSU help all of us win in the legislature?

GA PSC Stan Wise’s 2009 nuclear CWIP lobbying points eerily matched Southern Company’s, but suddenly he’s got separation-of-powers religion about Georgia Solar Utilities (GaSU). The PSC recommended GaSU’s utility bid anyway. When the legislature takes that up in a month or so, will GaSU CEO Robert Green, unlike SO or Georgia Power or Stan Wise, help the rest of us little people fix the 1973 Territoriality law so we can sell our solar electricity on a free market?

Dave Williams wrote for the Atlanta Business Chronicle yesterday, Georgia Public Service Commission moves ahead on solar energy,

Georgia Power logo The Georgia Public Service Commission approved a plan by Georgia Power Co. Tuesday to acquire an additional 210 megawatts of solar generating capacity, more than tripling its investment in solar energy.

GA PSC PR about 20 November 2012 decisions But a sharply divided PSC also gave a potential competitor to Georgia Power its blessing to appeal to the General Assembly to amend a 39-year-old law that gives the Atlanta-based utility the exclusive right to continue serving existing customers.

Under Georgia Power’s Advanced Solar Initiative, the company will buy solar power produced by both large “utility-scale” solar farms and from smaller projects operated by residential and commercial property owners.

Right, that’s actually only 10 Megawatts from “smaller projects”, maintaining Georgia Power’s monopoly while throwing throwing a bone to the rest of us.

While the PSC supported Georgia Power’s plan unanimously, a subsequent motion by McDonald encouraging other solar utilities interested in serving Georgia to pursue their plans with the legislature passed by the narrow margin of 3-2.

Georgia Solar Utilities Inc., a company launched in Macon, Ga., earlier this year, filed an application with the PSC in September for authority to generate solar energy in Georgia on a utility scale.

The two Nay votes were from the two recently-reelected PSC members, apparently now thoroughly in the pocket of the incumbent utilities. Here’s one of them now:

Continue reading →

Solar up 50% over last year in Germany

July in Germany wasn’t a fluke: solar PV electricity production in Germany is up 50% over last year. Maybe we hould consider a Feed-in Tariffs (FIT) in Georgia like that in Germany. Unlike the Construction Work in Progress (CWIP) charge on Georgia Power bills for nuclear power people won’t get for years, if ever, FIT charges only apply after solar power is flowing.

Bloomberg Businessweek via AP 5 November 2012, German solar power production up 50 pct on year,

The German utilities’ industry association BDEW said Monday the solar power output rose to 25,000 gigawatt hours in the January to September period, from 16,500 gigawatt hours a year earlier.

It says solar power’s share in the country’s electricity production rose to 6.1 percent from 4.1 percent. Wind power gained slightly to 8.6 percent from 8.0 percent. Biomass plants accounted for almost 6 percent.

It says all renewable energies combined accounted for about 26 percent of electricity production over the first nine months.

Germany decided last year to phase out nuclear power by 2022 and replace it with renewable energies.

If you’re tired of Georgia Power and its parent Southern Company pouring your customer and tax dollars down that nuclear pit near the Savannah River, or if you’d just rather have solar or wind power, you can send in your CWIP charge as a separate check, with a note on it. Even if you’re not a Georgia Power customer, you can contact them or Southern Company (or the GA PSC or the legislature) about this.

-jsq

Georgia Power raising rates

Georgia Power is raising rates in January, despite its recent announcement that it would lower rates because of lower fuel bills. Why raising? Mostly the new nukes and for a new natural gas plant. And 16% of the rise is for energy efficiency. Does that seem like the right proportion to you?

Kristi Swartz wrote for the AJC 1 Nov 2012, Georgia Power bills to increase,

The average Georgia Power bill will increase about 44 cents a month starting in January, not decrease as many might have expected when the company announced last month its fuel costs had dropped.

The utility, which serves 2.4 million customers, notified state regulators in October that it would be applying for a residential rate reduction because the amount it pays for fuel has fallen 7 percent, saving $122 million. The utility cannot profit from lower fuel costs and must pass those savings on to customers.

So why are customer rates going up?

About $1.05 of the typical residential bill will go toward paying for a new natural gas unit at Plant McDonough-Atkinson in Smyrna. That increase already was approved as part of a three-tiered rate hike set in 2010.

Yep, that’s that set-in-2010 and keep-rising-’till-2013 natural gas rate hike that Georgia Power got away with while complaining about any potential solar subsidies. The one AJC complained would be “on autopilot”: Continue reading →

Nuclear reactors near here

If you think of nuclear reactors as something far away, or as much safer than Fukushima, you’re in for a surprise. The most notorious reactors are the ones not yet built, units 3 and 4 at Plant Vogtle near Augusta and their famous financial boondoggle. But others are closer, older, and more numerous than you may know.

Here’s a map by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).

That map’s not clickable, so here’s a table, selected from an NRC table by distance from Valdosta:

NameOwnerWhereDistance
from
Valdosta
Hatch 1 & 2* SNOC 11 miles N of Baxley, GA 100 miles
Farley 1 & 2SNOC 18 miles SE of Dothan, AL 125 miles
Crystal River 3 PGN 80 miles N of Tampa, FL 160 miles
Vogtle 1 & 2 SNOC 26 miles SE of Augusta, GA 200 miles
Summer SCEG 26 miles NW of Columbia, SC 300 miles
Saint Lucie 1 & 2 FPL 10 miles SE of Ft. Pierce, FL 325 miles
Oconee 1,2,3 Duke 30 miles W of Greenville, SC 330 miles
Robinson 2 PGN 26 miles NW of Florence, SC 350 miles
Sequoya 1 & 2 TVA 16 miles NE of Chattanooga, TN 360 miles
Catawba 1 & 2 Duke 18 miles S of Charlotte, NC 390 miles
McGuire 1 & 2 Duke 17 miles N of Charlotte, NC 410 miles
Browns Ferry 1,2,3* TVA 32 miles W of Huntsville, AL 410 miles
Turkey Point 3 & 4 FPL 20 miles S of Miami, FL 440 miles
Brunswick 1 & 2* PGN 40 miles S of Wilmington, NC 480 miles
Waterford 3 Entergy 25 miles W of New Orleans, LA 495 miles
Shearon Harris 1 PGN 20 miles SW of Raleigh, NC 498 miles
* GE Mark I; Duke: Duke Energy Power Company, LLC; Entergy: Entergy Nuclear Operations, Inc.; FPL: Florida Power & Light Co.; PGN: Progress Energy; SCEG: South Carolina Electric & Gas Co.; SNOC: Southern Nuclear Operating Company; TVA: Tennessee Valley Authority

Five operating nuclear power reactors are closer to us Continue reading →

Calvert Cliffs nuke terminated

Yesterday on Nuclear Information and Resource Service’s website:

Update, November 1, 2012: UniStar is seeking review of decision by NRC Commissioners, Nuclear Energy Institute filed motion in support. NIRS and NRC staff support the ASLB decision. We will post the Commissioners’ decision when filed. However, today the ASLB officially issued an order terminating the Calvert Cliffs-3 licensing proceeding.

That continues what happened after EDF pulled out and neither Southern Company (SO) nor Duke would step in. Another one down, SO: watch out for your three-legged nuclear regulatory-capture stool at Plant Vogtle on the Savannah River!

-jsq

PS: Owed to Star Priscilla.

 

The power of going solar —John S. Quarterman

Solar panels on farm workshop --John S. Quarterman My op-ed in the VDT today. Remember to vote today or Tuesday. -jsq

This spring, the University at Buffalo turned on 750 kilowatts of solar electricity. Rutgers U., in New Jersey, installed 1.4 megawatts in 2009 and started on 8 MW this summer. Down here with a lot more sun, how about solar panels on VSU parking lots?

There’s plenty of private solar financing available. Also in New Jersey, a company installed 6 MW of solar on high school land and leased the power to the school supplying most of its needs win-win. You can go see a solar farm already working fine here, 200 kilowatts at Mud Creek Wastewater Plant. Why not do the same


View Larger Map

at Lowndes High School, where all the world on I-75 could see, attracting business to our community?

Why not?

Continue reading →

Softbank’s Son to install solar in Japan: watch out, Georgia Power!

The same Masayoshi Son who shook up Japan’s Internet market and is about to do the same in the U.S. is moving to modify Japan’s power market from nuclear to solar. Watch out, Georgia Power and Southern Company! If you don’t get a move on, Son-san will eat your lunch, too.

Mariko Yasu wrote for Bloomberg Businessweek 23 June 2011, Softbank’s CEO Wants a Solar-Powered Japan,

Masayoshi Son Billionaire Masayoshi Son made a fortune taking on Japan’s phone monopoly. Now he aims to shake up its power utilities after the worst nuclear crisis in 25 years. The 53-year-old chief executive officer of Softbank says he will build solar farms to generate electricity, with support from at least 33 of Japan’s 47 prefectures. He’s asking for access to transmission networks owned by the 10 regional utilities and an agreement that they buy his electricity. No other company has secured unlimited access to the those transmission networks. The utilities would not comment. Japan’s main business organization, the Keidanren, called for “careful analysis” before any drastic change in the power system took place.

If Japan ever felt ready to back Son’s ambitious plan, this is the moment. Radiation has spread across at least 600 square kilometers (230 square miles) in the northeast since the Mar. 11 earthquake and tsunami led to meltdowns at the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant. Outgoing Prime Minister Naoto Kan said in May he will rethink a plan to increase atomic power to 50 percent of the nation’s energy output from 30 percent. Renewable energy already accounts for 10 percent, according to Japan’s Agency for Natural Resources and Energy. Son wants to see that tripled by 2020. “The question is how this nation is going to survive after cutting nuclear power,” he said at a government panel meeting on June 12.

Complacent Georgia Power and SO, you maybe don’t think he can do it? NTT probably thought that, too:

Continue reading →

We can charge you even if it’s cancelled! —CWIPped Georgia Power

Steve Willis 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.

Everyone 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

Continue reading →

Georgia Power hikes prices for gas and nuclear, then complains about solar

Back in February, Georgia Power's natural gas Plant McDonough 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 Georgia Power is the snail in the way of solar power in Georgia 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 reading →

Denmark reaches 200 MW solar goal 8 years ahead of schedule

If tiny Denmark, farther north than Edmonton, Alberta, has already deployed 200 MW of solar capacity, why can't Georgia Power do it? We know why: Southern Company's three-legged nuclear regulatory-capture stool is too profitable for SO and Georgia Power.

Molly Cotter wrote for Inhabitant 15 October 2012, Denmark Hits 200 Megawatt Solar Capacity Goal 8 Years Ahead of Schedule,

Lets face it — its rare we see a government goal reached on time, let alone early. Not too long ago, the Danish Government announced an ambitious goal to reach 200 megawatts of solar capacity by 2020, and as of last week, they have already met it! The country is currently installing an average of 36 megawatts of solar panels each month. At this rate, their resulting capacity by 2020 will be over five times the original goal. Denmark's power is currently 20% supplied by renewable sources, and the nation has set a goal of sourcing 100% of its energy from renewable sources by 2050.

Solar Megawatts 2012-10-16 So Denmark has already deployed four times as much solar capacity as GA PSC required of Georgia Power, and almost as much solar capacity as Georgia Power has just asked GA PSC to approve. While deploying more per month than Southern Company's largest solar farms anywhere.

Maybe it's time to elect Georgia Public Service Commissioners to represent you.

-jsq