Apparently $1.88 billion wasn’t enough for
Southern Company to charge the ratepayers
of Mississippi Power enough for their “clean coal” plant.
“Escalating costs”: kind of like
SO’s new nukes at Plant Vogtle?
Southern Company CEO Fanning says “I know people will try and link
those, but they are not at all even similar.”
What do you think?
Kristi Swartz wrote for the AJC 24 April 2103, Miss. power plant costs hurt Southern Co. profit,
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If we
can’t expect Georgia Power or Southern Company to change their tune about solar power,
what can we do?
Legislate and raise public pressure, while getting on with installing what
solar power we can.
Maybe it’s time to pass something like
HB 267 that would limit Georgia Power’s profits on
that 19-month-late and $1 billion over budget nuclear boondoggle at Plant Vogtle.
Instead of pouring more money down that broken concrete pit on the Savannah River,
we need something like
GA SB 51, The Georgia Cogeneration and Distributed Generation Act,
to fix
Georgia’s special solar financing problem,
the antique 1973 Territorial Electric Service Act.
That’s the 40-year-old antiquated law that SO CEO Thomas A. Fanning says
“we need to protect”.
Maybe SO does, for Fanning’s
huge raises in compensation.
Georgia Power and SO are not only defending that antique law,
they’re preventing
a Georgia Renewable Portfolio Standard (REPS) by stopping passage of bills like
HB 503.
Georgia Power, SO, and super-lobby ALEC
systematically oppose renewable energy standards.
They do this so successfully there are no REPS in Southern Company (SO)’s
service territory, nor in most of SO’s surrounding
“Competitive Generation Opportunities” states.
One of the few exceptions is North Carolina, and
a bill was introduced there to eliminate NC’s REPS.
Maybe it’s even time to do something about Georgia Power’s 11% guaranteed profit. Isn’t Georgia Power supposed to be a utility operating for the good of Georgians? Why does it get a guaranteed profit to pass on to Southern Company shareholder dividends and SO executive bonuses?
Georgia Power and even Southern Company could suddenly flip for solar power
like
Austin Energy did in 2003
and Cobb EMC did in 2012.
But that probably won’t happen without a lot of public pressure,
legal requirements by the Georgia legislature or PSC,
or a shareholder revolt.
So let’s start with
the public pressure….
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WCTV went downstream to Suwannee County, Florida, to see further effects after the
Valdosta PR that revealed what happened with the Lowndes County sewer leak.
One of their interviewees recommends escalating this ongoing problem
(first
Valdosta’s Withlacoochee Wastewater Treatment Plant flooded,
and now this) to the state governors’ level.
Eames Yates wrote for WCTV 27 April 2013, Suwannee River Could be Contaminated After Lowndes Sewer Spill,
Travis Luttrell also vacations in Suwannee County. He said “it’s a pretty big administrative challenge between the two governors. And is something that needs to be worked out between state to state and hopefully we can overcome the administrative challenges it might take to fix these kinds of problems.”
The Florida Department of Health also issued the advisory for Hamilton, Levy, Lafayette and Madison counties.
Here’s the WCTV video:
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Lowndes County notified the VDT that it was actually their sewer line
(not Valdosta’s) that broke this week,
but there’s still nothing on the Lowndes County website,
not on the
front page,
not under
Utilities,
and not under
County Clerk.
So the Lowndes County government did sort of
come clean about its sewer problem, but you have to know where
to look to see them washing.
And they actually fixed the problem by dumping county sewage
into Valdosta’s sewer main, which presumably means it ends
up in the same Withlacoochee Wastewater Treatment Plant
that the county has seemed to mostly regard as the city’s problem
and not theirs.
In the VDT 26 April 2013, Lowndes County Notification of Sewer Spill, Lowndes County Commission,
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Maybe Lowndes County should come clean about
its sewage spill
so Florida will stop blaming Valdosta.
Gainesville.com staff report today, Health dept. urges public to avoid Suwannee, Withlacoochee rivers,
This is the second time in two months that state health officials have had to warn residents of North Central Florida to avoid contact with the water flowing in the Suwannee — and both instances involve sewage contamination involving a spill in Valdosta.
Or maybe it’s normal for GA EPD to be more responsive than our local elected government. What do you think?
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Solar companies are shaking out just like car and computer companies before them.
Dozens of automobile manufacturers shook out to a handful of major ones;
Tesla is the first new one in decades.
So many computer hardware and software companies went under or were bought
by bigger ones that it would take a very long blog post to list them all;
I could name a dozen or two off the top of my head.
There’s a shakeout going on right now among mobile phone manufacturers:
even mighty Nokia is sinking.
The solar industry is going through that same normal shakeout phase.
Will electric utilities be next?
Stephen Lacey wrote for greentechsolar 23 April 2013, Four Must-See Charts on the Future of the Global Solar Market: Who will be left standing when the dust settles?
In 2009, after Spain’s market collapsed and the world faced a crippling financial crisis, GTM Research predicted a shake-out in the manufacturing sector. But unexpected growth in global demand, particularly in European markets, helped keep many producers afloat.
Then, in 2010 and 2011, we saw a surge of new manufacturing capacity — much of it driven by China — that created the structural oversupply faced by the industry today. As illustrated by the growing list of deceased solar companies and acquisitions, the delayed shake-out in the industry is now well underway.
This morning at the GTM Solar Summit, Shayle Kann, vice president of research, shared his outlook on consolidation, module prices, and the shifting global demand through 2016. Here are four charts from his presentation that provide a glimpse of what the world may look like in the next three years.
In 2010, when the period of irrational growth began in solar manufacturing, there were 357 active module producers.
By the end of this year, that number will be down to 145. And in 2016, it will drop below 100. (So if you’re at a conference talking to a person involved in manufacturing, there’s a good chance he or she might be out of a job or working for a different firm the next time you see them.)
He then predicts that solar PV panel prices may actually rise
briefly due to fewer manufacturers.
However, as he notes, demand will keep going up.
And demand combined with economies of scale may make prices continue down
with
Moore’s Law.
I think his installed capacity graph is way too conservative,
because he doesn’t go back far enough, which would reveal that
2010 growth is not an anomaly, it’s
a steady continuation of the
previous decade (well, except in Georgia).
We shall see what happens in the next few years.
One thing’s for certain: a few bankruptcies are not a problem for the world’s fastest-growing industry. They are merely a symptom of any industry growing that fast. Solar panels will continue to spread, ever-faster, and electric utilities need to adapt or soon their big utility shakeout will start, too. The utility shakeout may look more like an increase in companies, as many solar installers and vendors move in to handle distributed solar power if the incumbents won’t do it. That’s my speculation, and again we’ll see.
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Students Against Violating the Environment (SAVE) is having
an Earth Day event
5:00pm until 8:00pm today, Friday 26 April 2013 on the VSU front lawn.
Come celebrate Earth Day with us! The event is open to campus and the community. There will be raffles, information tables, speakers, food, and live music. Don’t miss it!
Here’s their facebook event and Flyer.
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As long as we leave it to Georgia Power and Southern Company, Georgia will remain far behind in solar power jobs, profits, and energy independence. Hear Southern Company CEO Thomas A. Fanning say:
We remain very bullish on solar. When we think about renewables, I think renewables are exceedingly important to this nation’s future. My sense is until we see significant technology innovation, my sense is that that will probably very late in this decade or beyond that, we still are gonna get by far the lion’s share of electricity from central stations.
SO’s “bullish on solar” means nuclear, “clean coal”, and natural gas
big baseload power stations, and forget about solar or wind.
That’s why
Georgia Power has raised customer rates to pay for gas and nuclear plants
while complaining about solar.
Here’s Georgia Power CEO Paul Bowers:
“Renewable (energy sources are) going to have a sliver,” Bowers said of fuels to create electricity. “Is it going to be 2 or 4 percent? That’s yet to be determined. Economics will drive that. But you always remember (that renewable energy is) an intermittent resource. It’s not one you can depend on 100 percent of the time.”
What is to be done?
-jsq
Apparently whoever is responsible for a major spill into Georgia waters
needs to immediately tell GA EPD DNR and the local health department
and post a sign, and
the sewage leak at GA 133 into the Withlacoochee River
qualifies as a major spill.
The City of Valdosta reported it as such, but it’s not clear it was their spill (update: it was Lowndes County’s spill).
Excerpts below from GA DNR’s guidelines.
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Water Quality: A Guide for Municipal Compliance by Mick Smith, Environmental Engineer.
Continue readingSpills and Major Spills
Spill
- Any discharge of raw sewage < 10,000 gallons to waters of the state
Major Spill
- Any discharge of raw sewage > 10,000 gallons to waters of the state
- BOD5 or TSS = 1.5 x weekly avg. permit limit
- Any discharge resulting in a water quality violation
Valdosta (update: it was Lowndes County’s spill) is famous in Florida again for sewage in our rivers.
Last month it was flooding at the Withlacoochee Wastwater Treatment Plant. This month it’s a broken sewer line. WTXL reported yesterday, Sewer line burst in Valdosta — Sewage spewing into river,
Nine hundred gallons of sewage is spewing onto the ground and into the Withlacoochee river, every single minute.
Here’s Valdosta’s Report of Major Spill from yesterday:
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