Power generation for both traditional electricity uses and transportation
is changing.
Michael Liedtke and Jonathan Fahey wrote for AP and Inc. 1 May 2015, Elon Musk Unveils Tesla’s Ambitious New Home Battery System: “Our goal here is to fundamentally change the way the world uses energy,” Musk told reporters gathered in Hawthorne, California.
The batteries are likely to become more useful if, as expected, more utilities and regulators allow Continue reading
Solar power made much of SO’s increased energy revenues for 2013 and 2014. What else will we learn at the Southern Company 2015 Annual Meeting of Shareholders, Wednesday, May 27, 2015? Has Southern Company finally looked up, and will it say, like Thomas Alva Edison in 1931, “I’d put my money on the sun and solar energy”?
To attend the SO shareholder meeting you have to have owned stock by Monday, March 30, 2015, or you’ll need to get somebody to appoint you their proxy. Since I’m an SO stockholder, I got the 216-page Southern Company Notice of 2015 Annual Meeting of Stockholders, Proxy Statement and 2014 Annual Report, page D-8:
In 2014, wholesale revenues increased $329 million, or 17.7%, as compared to the prior year due to a $326 million increase in energy revenues and a $3 million increase in capacity revenues. The increase in energy revenues was primarily related to increased revenue under existing contracts as well as new solar PPAs and requirements contracts primarily at Southern Power, Continue reading
Friday’s vote started at least a year and a half ago. Organized years-long activism is paying off for everyone.
Summer before last, after statewide requests by Georgia Sierra Club, Greenlaw, and many others: Georgia PSC required Georgia Power to buy twice
as much solar power.
About a year later, Mary Landers, Savannahnow, 18 November 2014, Georgia is fastest growing solar market,
Last year the Georgia Public Service Commission approved a motion for Georgia Power, the state’s largest utility, to add 525 MW of solar power generation to its portfolio by 2016.
“That pushed out the growth of solar, especially projecting forward,” Continue reading
Decatur County scores two big solar projects. When will Lowndes County get a move on in solar? How about some projects like this at your empty industrial parks, Valdosta-Lowndes Development Authority? Now that even Southern Company CEO Tom Fanning is bragging about renewable energy, maybe the solar sun is shining enough for other local governments to see it.
Southern Company PR, PRnewsWire, 20 February 2015, Southern Company subsidiary acquires two Georgia solar projects totaling 99 megawatts,
Southern Company subsidiary Southern Power today announced the acquisition of two photovoltaic (PV) solar projects totaling 99 megawatts (MW) in Georgia — the 80-MW Decatur Parkway Solar Project and the 19-MW Decatur County Solar Project — from Tradewind Energy, Inc.
The projects were proposed by Continue reading
Elon Musk’s recent reminder that Tesla is working on a house-sized battery has caused quite a stir, but not enough. Tesla alone isn’t the significant part: Tesla opening a market for inexpensive home solar storage methods is. And not all those methods will be batteries: also coming are capacitors, organic vats, compressed air, and water pumped up towers, for storage to car- and house- size to municipal- and utility-scale, all of which will drive solar and wind deployment even faster.
John McDuling, QZ, 30 July 2014, How solar energy storage could make Tesla much more than an automaker,
How lucrative could the solar energy storage business be for Tesla? Almost as lucrative as selling cars.
That’s according to Morgan Stanley, which this week Continue reading
Batteries are just one of many reasons, including electric vehicles, smart grid, solar and wind power (including pass HB 57 and you can profit by getting financing for your own solar panels), plus massive savings on health care and electricity bills; batteries are one of many reasons that fixing climate change will save us all money, clean up our air and water, expand our forests, preserve property rights, and make some people rich:
In fact, a recent report suggests that revenue from the distributed energy storage market — meaning battery packs and other storage devices located directly at homes and businesses (many of which now generate electricity through solar) — could exceed $16.5 billion by 2024. Another report predicts $68 billion in revenue in the same time frame from the grid-scale storage market. This includes large-scale battery packs, hydro-storage systems that use cheap abundant electricity to pump water uphill to drive turbines later on, or even solar thermal systems that store energy as heat in molten salt.
And it’s all happening fast, so fast your jaw will drop if you’re not paying attention. So let’s stop talking about the costs of fixing climate change. It’s not just no-cost and free, not just in the future but right now; we’re all actually going to be better off through fixing climate change: healthier and more prosperous.
Sami Grover wrote Continue reading
When a power source grows 66% a year on average people start taking notice. Few had heard of the Internet in 1993: now it’s in your pocket. In less than a decade, by 2023, solar power will generate more energy than any other U.S. source. To keep Georgia from being left behind, this is the year to change a 1973 law.
If charts like this one aren’t familiar yet, they will be in the next year or two:
Tim McDonnell, Mother Jones, 7 November 2014,
Here Comes the Sun: America’s Solar Boom, in Charts:
It’s been a bit player, but solar power is about to shine.
At 66% more per year, solar power’s current 1% of U.S. electricity next year will be 1.66%, then 2.76%, then Continue reading
Who would pass up cutting their monthly electric and transportation costs by 60%? Well, people in Georgia will get passed by unless we change an antique 1973 law.
Chris Mooney wrote for Washington Post 24 December 2014, How solar power and electric cars could make suburban living awesome again,
…the solar-EV combo may just be too good for suburbanites to pass up — no matter their political ideology. Strikingly, the new paper estimates that for a household that buys an electric vehicle and also owns a solar panel system generating enough power for both the home and the electric car, the monthly cost might be just $89 per month — compared with $255 per month for a household driving a regular car without any solar panels.
Three times as many millios of dollars invested as expected, 3,000 jobs, and New York Governor Andrew Cuomo says “they could have gone anywhere on the planet”. They could have come here. They went to snowy Buffalo.
David Robinson wrote for Buffalo News 23 September 2014, ‘Historic day for Buffalo,’ Zemsky says of SolarCity RiverBend plans,
SolarCity’s planned factory in South Buffalo — and the 3,000 jobs that come with it — packs a powerful economic punch.
To be built on the former Republic Steel plant site in South Buffalo, the factory is expected to bring more new jobs to the region than the steel maker ever had in its heyday.
With the ability to make enough solar panels to generate more than 1,000 megawatts of electricity, the factory would be Continue reading
An Economic Development Council in snowy Buffalo has landed a solar manufacturer with suddenly even deeper pockets, while our Industrial Authority didn’t even meet this month. Maybe instead of supporting an unnecessary fracked methane pipeline that diverts resources we could get on with real solar industry here in sunny south Georgia?
WIVB.com wrote yesterday, Purchase of company coming to Buffalo could be boon for WNY,
Silevo, a company that had planned to set up shop at Buffalo’s Riverbend site, has been bought out by SolarCity, and the plan could mean thousands of jobs for Western New York.
Silevo is Continue reading
