Author Archives: admin

Waste offer letter: take it or….

Unsigned trash letter from Lowndes County
I received the appended unsigned letter from Lowndes County
recently,
which says the
5,000 residents of the unincorporated parts that currently use the
county’s waste disposal sites can sign up with Advanced Disposal
(of New York City) for curbside pickup or…. There is no or. So
look forward to trash dumping long roadsides, in parking lots in
town, and on your property. And neither outgoing County Chairman
Ashley Paulk nor County Manager Joe Pritchard even had the courtesy
to sign the letter.

After noting that back in June the county changed waste permit
cards from 12 months to 6 months, the letter says:

At purchase, information was made available regarding
possible future options for solid waste management in
unincorporated Lowndes County.

So the county is backing off from claiming card buyers got a
letter spelling out options. I got no such letter with card
purchase.

This consideration became necessary due to revenue
generated by the sale of the permit cards, not covering the cost of
operating the centers.


And that’s all the accounting we get. Where is the summary of
expenses for the centers compared to revenue? The VDT reported from
the Commissioners’ stealth retreat back in April:

“In total, the county is currently spending $782,058.34
each year for solid waste disposal, a reduction from $1,176,207.75
in 2007.”

As I pointed out then, “So that’s a rapid reduction in cost to
less than a third of what it used to be, and less than half of what
it was only a year ago.” Later Joe Pritchard said those numbers
didn’t include everything being spent. So what was actually being
spent? We the taxpayers and we the card payers don’t know. After

a long series of meetings to which the public was either not
invited at all or was not invited to provide input, at its last
meeting of the year (exactly as I predicted),

Commissioners approved changes to the solid waste ordinance
eliminating the collection sites and

granted a monopoly to Advanced Disposal Services of

New York City.

Former Chairman Ashley Paulk

recently complained Moody AFB had become “privatized”. Yet at
his last Commission meeting he presided over privatizing the
county’s public service of solid waste collection.

Three new Commissioners were just sworn in yesterday, including
a new chair. The new Commission in the new year is not, so far as I
know, bound by the decisions of any previous Commission. It could
undo the damage the old one just did. Or it could, like the old
one, ignore concerns of

public health, safety, and the environment that

the state requires them to implement, plus concerns of

local waste collection businesses, of local residents

about recycling and

about the lack of any other option than curbside; will the new
Commission continue to kick 5,000 county residents towards curbside
collection or tossing their trash in the your yard?

Unsigned trash letter from Lowndes County:

Continue reading →

Industrial Authority working for solar in south Georgia @ VLCIA 2012-12-18

The

Industrial Authority
is working to find locations for some of the
210 MW Georgia Power got the PSC to shift
from biomass to solar back in September.
That’s a good next step.

Jason Schaefer wrote for the VDT 23 Dec 2012,

Solar power push has Authority working to establish connections,

Since the Georgia Public Service Commission (PSC) approved Georgia

Allan Ricketts, Projects and Existing Industry Manager, VLCIA, 2012-12-18
Power Company’s plan Nov. 20 to add 210 megawatts of solar power to
its electrical grid, the Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial
Authority has been devising strategies to draw solar energy
producers to South Georgia.

Georgia Power will issue a Request for Proposals (RFP) from solar
energy collection and production companies in early 2013, according
to the PSC, and the company will contract with the lowest bidders to
purchase their energy and place it on the Georgia Power electrical
grid for public consumption.

Georgia Power plans to add 90 megawatts to its grid from distributed
generation (small companies producing between 100 kilowatts and 1
megawatt), and 120 megawatts of large utility-scale projects
producing up to 20 megawatts each. The company plans to price the
solar energy at $0.13 per kWh for distributed generation and up to
$0.12 per kWh for utility-scale projects, according to the PSC.

This government-approved commercial push for solar energy could be a
boon to sunny South Georgia as well as the greater Valdosta area
specifically, and the Authority is prepared to accommodate the solar
energy producers they expect.


Andrew Schruijer, Executive Director, VLCIA, 2012-12-18
“I think there’s a very good possibility of solar energy
coming to South Georgia,” Executive Director Andrea Schruijer
said. “Possibly in the near future.”

There’s more in the VDT story.
It’s pretty much what
Col. Ricketts also told me after the VLCIA meeting Tuesday a week ago.
He asked me if I knew what “distributed” meant.
I pointed out Georgia Power’s version of distributed was actually not
very distributed, compared to

Continue reading →

Education at Wiregrass Tech and startup funding, Chamber quarterly luncheon @ VLCoC 2012-12-18



Education at Wiregrass Tech, startup competition and awards by Guardian Bank,
and more!
Chamber president Tim Jones invited me to the quarterly luncheon of the
Valdosta-Lowndes County Chamber of Commerce,
held 18 December 2012 at the Rainwater Conference Center.
I counted about 70 people there, and only maybe a dozen were Chamber
board and staff, so that was a very well-attended meeting.



Keynote speaker

Dr. Ray Perrin,
president of

Wiregrass Technical College said:

“Strong education systems are the heart of economic development.”

He congratulated

VSU on the recent football win,
as well as the various other local school systems, government bodies,
and businesses, and proceeded to give an overview of what Wiregrass Tech is
and what it does, which includes everything from automobile repair
to computer science; from adult education for high school equivalency
to advanced courses, in the eleven counties it serves,
through the campuses in Valdosta, Fitzgerald, and Adel, as well as
at Moody AFB and online overseas.
He noted that changes in the HOPE scholarship and economic improvement
had decreased enrollment, but Wiregrass Tech still has a large
student body and is adding programs, such as in nursing
and respiratory therapy.
Plus a 97.5% placement rate.

Also in the plans is an

Allied Health Education building
100,000 square foot facility that would cost about $20 million,
for which Wiregrass Tech will be approaching the Georgia General Assembly
in the next few years.
Dr. Perrin invited feedback and requested assistance,
both financially and
in getting the word out about what Wiregrass Tech can do.




Tim Jones remarked that he was also on the board of the

Wiregrass Tech Foundation which was in a fundraising drive,
so anybody who wanted to donate could see him.
(And it turns out you can also

donate online.)

Here’s

a video playlist
of the entire meeting, followed by a few notes.

Continue reading →

Fracking: coming soon to a state near you?

Lest you think fracking is something that happens only in faraway
places like

Alberta
or Pennsylvania,
look at
this map of North American shale gas basins,
extending right through the Appalachians from Pennsylvania through
West Virginia, Virginia, Tennessee, and North Carolina into Georgia, Alabama,
and Mississippi.


Source:

Canada fracking creates ‘test tube‘ residents in B.C., Alberta,
by Lynn Herrmann for Digital Journal 5 January 2012.

How long before Georgia Power or Southern Company decide natural
gas would be even cheaper if they fracked in Georgia or Alabama or Mississippi?
How long until

unavoidable human error
starts fracking polluting our local groundwater and rivers?
For that matter, isn’t it bad enough already that other people’s
water is fracked for cheap gas in Georgia?

We could just

get on with solar power,
which doesn’t spill.

-jsq

NRC says it’s “never been a practice” to show licensee documents to the public



After

Kendra Ulrich of Friends of the Earth asked
about some licensee documents related to last week’s
NRC hearing in faraway Maryland on restarting California’s
San Onofre nuclear reactor,
NRC’s
David Beaulieu expanded on NRC’s refusal to divulge the documents.

Here’s

the video:


Video by Myla Reson at NRC, Maryland, 18 December 2012.



You can hear him say it’s “never been a practice” to let the public
see licensee documents. But if they’re being used in making a license
decision, why doesn’t that make them public documents accessible by the
public? Oh, right “it’s very complex” but “it’s a yes or no question”
and “I will assess”, he says. It’s good to be king!

I wonder if the public had some assurance of
transparency maybe the NRC wouldn’t get

so many FOIA requests?

Remember, this is the same NRC that gave

100-mile-from-here same-design-as-Fukushima
Plant Hatch
a

20 year license extension,
and the same NRC

that gave Plant Vogtle a clean bill of health
at a public meeting two days before Unit 1 shut down,
and the same NRC that could stop the new nukes there

even if the GA PSC won’t.

What if we deployed solar power instead, on budget and on time?

-jsq

Valdosta City Clerk earns international certification

And now for some good local news:
Valdosta City Clerk Teresa Bolden has been recognized by an international
institute.

Valdosta city PR 18 December 2012,

Valdosta City Clerk Teresa Bolden Earns CMC,



City of Valdosta Clerk Teresa Bolden has earned the designation of
Certified Municipal Clerk (CMC), awarded by the International
Institute of Municipal Clerks (IIMC), Inc. IIMC grants the CMC
designation exclusively to municipal clerks who complete the
demanding education requirements and who have a record of
significant contributions to their local government, their community
and state.

“In light of the speed and drastic nature of change these days,
lifelong learning is not only desirable, it is necessary for all in
local government to keep pace with growing demands and changing
needs of the citizens we serve,” said City Manager Larry Hanson.
“Teresa performs her duties with the highest degree of
professionalism and integrity and is a great credit to our city and
to her profession. We are fortunate to benefit from her talent and
ability.”

As an example of Clerk Bolden’s work, here is

baldosta’s apparently complete online list of ordinances.

-jsq

Frack human error

What do you get in a solar spill?
A sunny day.
What do you get in a fracking spill?
Polluted groundwater and drinking water.
When do you get it?
Whenever somebody makes a mistake, which turns out to be frequently.


Alberta Finds Mismanagement of Errors Causes Fracking Water Contamination,

“There is no amount of regulation that can overcome human error,”


said Alberta’s Energy Resources Conservation Board (ERCB) spokesman
Darin Barter. ERCB released an investigation report that cites
inadequate management of risks as one of the main causes of a
September 2011 accident that contaminated groundwater with toxic
hydraulic fracturing chemicals, including the cancer causing agent
known as BTEX (benzene, toulene, ethylbenzene, and xylene).

At least the company involved in this particular incident did something about it:

Personnel from Crew Energy told the Calgary Herald the company is
“embarrassed” about the accident. Rob Morgan, chief operating
officer for Crew said, “there’s no question of our appreciation of
the severity of this,” adding, “pretty much all of the personnel who
were involved in this particular circumstance are no longer with the
company.”

But the groundwater is still contaminated.
And where will they find replacement personnel who will never make mistakes?

Meanwhile, a solar spill is called a nice day.

-jsq

 

What is Moore’s Law for solar power?

Many people are unfamiliar with Moore’s Law, and

how it affects solar power.
Moore’s Law doesn’t occur
in many technologies or industries,
but it’s there in solar photovoltaic (PV).
For those of us whose whole working lives have been
affected by Moore’s Law, seeing it turn up in another field
is like a flashing neon sign pointing to the future.
A future of distributed solar power sunrise
over the crumbling industrial relics of coal, nuclear, and natural gas plants.
A future with much less control by monopoly utilities,
which is why they fight it.
If they even see it coming; Bill Gates didn’t, back in the day,
but Jeff Bezos of Amazon did.
They both surfed that tide,
and Moore’s Law made both of them among the richest humans on the planet
while changing the world for all of us.
Steve Jobs even used it to put a computer in your pocket
more powerful than big companies could buy a few decades ago.
What does Moore’s Law for solar power mean for electric power?

This chart shows the telltale symptom of Moore’s Law in solar electricity:
65% compound annual growth rate in solar power plants
deployed for the past 5 years:


Source:
Solar Power Graphs to Make You Smile
by Zachary Shahan for CleanTechnica 10 June 2011.

As SunPower’s Dinwoodie puts it:

That 17 GW installed in 2010 is the equivalent of 17 nuclear power
plants — manufactured, shipped and installed in one year. It
can take decades just to install a nuclear plant. Think about that.
I heard Bill Gates recently call solar “cute.” Well,
that’s 17 GW of “cute” adding up at an astonishing pace.



Bill Gates should recall that Moore’s Law made formerly “cute” PCs with his
“cute” operating system Windows expand into every company in the world
and made him the second richest human on the planet.
Growth of computer software markets,

like for the U.S. as shown in the graph on the right,
is a symptom of the original Moore’s Law.
Software runs on hardware, and these hardware market curves
are driven more directly by Moore’s Law:

Continue reading →

Solar Bangladesh

Georgia Power’s idea of “distributed” is 2 to 20 Megawatt solar farms
doled out over several years.
Bangladesh reminds us how distributed is really done.

Justin Guay wrote for ThinkProgress 18 Dec 2012,

Small Is Big: Bangladesh Installs One Million Solar Home Systems



In one of the poorest countries on earth, a renewable energy
company, Grameen Shakti, is busy installing nearly 1,000 solar home
systems each day. It turns out all that small-scale solar has
achieved something quite big.

In November, Grameen Shakti hit one million Solar Home Systems
installed. The company’s milestone reinforces a lesson that is
increasingly clear: Whether it’s Germany, the U.S., or even China,
distributed solar installations are driving the solar revolution.

How is this possible?

Continue reading →

Bainbridge beats Valdosta!


Bainbridge City Hall now hums with solar energy,
Tristan Baurick wrote for Kitsap Sun 2 August 2012:



City Hall’s array of 297 rooftop solar panels is expected to produce
the equivalent of 20 percent of the building’s energy needs,
according to Joe Deets, executive director of Community Energy
Solutions, the Bainbridge nonprofit group that spearheaded the
privately-funded project.

“This is a great day for Bainbridge,” Deets said.

How many solar panels do you see on Valdosta City Hall?
Well, that’s a historic building.
But how about City Hall Annex?
The parking lot?
The

formerly “100% Paid by SPLOST” Lowndes County palace that
we’re now paying almost $9 million in bonds for?
Nope, not a solar panel in sight.

Oh, sorry, that’s

Continue reading →