Category Archives: Coal

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 →

Wind and solar were all the new U.S. electric generation in September 2012

Wind and sun provided all the new electric power generation
deployed in September 2012.
As Moore’s Law continues to decrease solar prices, solar
power gets deployed still more rapidly,
and wind also gets installed on time and on budget.
Meanwhile, nuclear takes a

three-legged nuclear regulatory-capture stool
and hardly any new reactors get finished anyway.


Stephen Lacey wrote for TP Climate Progress 24 October 2012,

Wind And Solar Make Up 100% Of New U.S. Electricity Capacity In September,

September was tied for the

hottest of any September on record
globally. It was also a very hot month for renewable energy in the
U.S. According

to figures from the Federal Energy Regulatory
Commission, wind and solar accounted for all new electricity
capacity added to America’s grid in September.

New wind is up 25% Jan-Sep 2012 over the same period last year,
and new solar is up 78%.
For comparison, new coal is

Continue reading →

What Georgia Power is afraid of: GaSU and Dr. Smith; and you

So what is Georgia Power afraid of

that made their CEO Paul Bowers double down on old-style baseload?
Competition, that’s what!
What could be more scary in the power-monopoly state of the

1973 Territorial Electric Service Act?


GaSU sun
On one side, Georgia Power faces

GaSU and its 80 or 90 MW solar plant proposal.
Walter C. Jones wrote for OnlineAthens 24 September 2012,

Proposed solar company could stir up Georgia’s utility structure,

A proposal from a start-up business promises to lower electricity
rates by rebating profits to customers if given a chance to compete
as Georgia Power Co.’s “mirror image.”


GaSU fb profile image
To proceed with its long-range plan of developing 2 gigawatts of
solar power, the start-up, Georgia Solar Utilities Inc., wants to
start by building an 80-megawatt “solar farm” near
Milledgeville as soon as it gets a green light from the Georgia
Public Service Commission. GaSU filed its request last week, and as
of Monday, it’s still too fresh for public evaluation.

So radical is the proposal that spokespersons for Georgia Power and
the Georgia Solar Energy Association said they still were evaluating
it and could not comment.

Groups that normally advocate for customers also are staying quiet.

GaSU executives recognize such a big change won’t come easily.

Continue reading →

Georgia Power’s Bowers pushes solar misinformation out the next fifty years

Paul Bowers, CEO of Georgia Power, doubled down on baseload nuclear,
coal, and natural gas for the next fifty years.
What’s he scared of?

Nick Coltrain wrote for OnlineAthens yesterday,

Renewable push not in the cards for Ga. Power,


Georgia Power CEO Paul Bowers in Georgia Trend, November 2011
“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.”

One time you can depend on it is hot summer days when everybody is
air conditioning, which is why

Roger Duncan of Austin Energy in 2003

Austin Energy flipped in one year
from spouting such nonsense to deploying the most aggressive solar rooftop
rebate program in the country.
Austin Energy did the math and found those rebates would cost
about the same as a coal plant and would generate as much energy.
And when it is needed most, unlike the fossilized baseload grid,
which
left millions without power in the U.S. in June
and

hundreds of millions without power in India in July.

Bowers knows better than the nonsense he just spouted;
as recently as

November 2011 he told Georgia Trend,

Continue reading →

A billion people on solar: India


Figure 6: Solar Sheep (Concentrix Solar PV concentrator plant)
Two professors in India have done the math and found that
there’s plenty of available land in India (much of it on rooftops)
to power its billion people on solar energy alone.
And solar uses less water than nuclear or coal, also as we already knew for the U.S.

Today in The Hindu,

India can meet energy needs sans N-power: Study,

According to their study, 4.1 per cent of the total uncultivable and

Figure 3: 1GWh Land area per energy source
waste land area in India is enough to meet the projected annual
demand of 3,400 terawatt-hour (TWh) by 2070 by solar energy alone (1
terawatt-hour per year equals 114 megawatts). The land area required
will be further reduced to 3.1 per cent “if we bring the other
potential renewable energy sources of India into picture”,
they claim. They conclude that land availability is not a limiting
constraint for the solar source as believed. According to their
study, 4.1 per cent of the total uncultivable and waste land area in
India is enough to meet the projected annual demand of 3,400
terawatt-hour (TWh) by 2070 by solar energy alone (1 terawatt-hour
per year equals 114 megawatts). The land area required will be
further reduced to 3.1 per cent “if we bring the other
potential renewable energy sources of India into picture”,
they claim. They conclude that land availability is not a limiting
constraint for the solar source as believed.

The graph above shows land occupation needed to generate 1 gigawatt hour (1GWh)
for each of coal, nuclear, hydroelectric, and solar.
It is Figure 3 from the actual study,

Is land really a constraint for the utilitzation of solar energy in India?
by H. Mitavachan and J. Srinivasan, Current Science, Vol. 103, No. 2, pp. 163-168, 25 July 2012.
More from the Hindu article, with graphs from the journal article:

Continue reading →

Southern Company’s three-legged nuclear regulatory-capture stool


The

failed EDF nuke project at Calvert Cliffs in Maryland
makes it clearer why Southern Company (SO) was the first company
to get a nuclear permit in 30 years:
it was the only one big enough and monopolistic enough to pull it off.
Even then it’s such a

bet-the-farm risk
that even

“great, big company”
SO only dared
to deploy its

“great big huge scale“ equipment
with the regulatory capture triple-whammy
of
a stealth tax on Georgia Power bills,
PSC approval of cost overruns,
and
an $8.33 billion federal loan guarantee:





  1. a legislated
    stealth tax in the form of

    a rate hike on Georgia Power customers     for
    power they won’t get for years if ever.
    If you’re a Georgia Power customer,
    look on your bill for Nuclear Construct Cost Recovery Rider.
    You’ll find it adds about 5% on top of your Current Service Subtotal.
    Georgia is one of only a handful of states where such a
    Construction Work in Progress (CWIP) charge is legal

    thanks to our regulatory-captured legislature.
    Doubling down on bad energy bets,
    Southern Company is also

    trying to use CWIP to build a coal plant in Mississippi.



  2. A captive Public Service Commission that

    rubber-stamps costs     for Plant Vogtle.
    In case there was any doubt as to the PSC’s role in legitimizing those new nukes,
    the very next day Fitch reaffirmed Southern Company’s bond ratings.

    Southern Company’s regulated utility subsidiaries derive predictable
    cash flows from low-risk utility businesses, enjoy relatively
    favorable regulatory framework in their service territories, and
    exhibit limited commodity price risks due to the ability to recover
    fuel and purchased power through separate cost trackers.

    Translation: Georgia Power customers subsidize SO’s bonds
    and SO shareholders’ stock dividends.
    The PSC also approved
    cost overruns being
    passed on to Georgia Power customers,
    and those nukes are already over

    $400 or $900 million    , depending on who you ask.
    What do you expect when

    4 out of 5 Public Service Commissioners
    apparently took 70% of their campaign contributions from utilities
    they regulate or their employees or their law firms,
    and the fifth commissioner took about 20% from such sources?
    Hm, there’s an election going on right now!




  3. An

    $8.33 billion federal loan guarantee.
    Even that’s not good enough for SO and Georgia Power: SO is
    asking for less down payment.

And what if even one of that three-legged regulatory capture stool’s legs
went away?

Continue reading →

Bill Moyers on ALEC

Bill Moyers takes on ALEC.

Posted yesterday On Bill Moyers’ website,

‘United States of ALEC’ Video Previews

This week, Moyers & Company (check local listings) presents


“United States of ALEC,” a report on the most
influential corporate-funded political force most of America has
never heard of — ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange
Council. A national consortium of state politicians and powerful
corporations, ALEC presents itself as a “nonpartisan
public-private partnership”. But behind that mantra lies a
vast network of corporate lobbying and political action aimed to
increase corporate profits at public expense without public
knowledge.

He said more

on Huffington Post Wednesday,

Continue reading →

Georgia Power inches towards more solar, trailing New Jersey

If you’re quick, you may be able to sell solar from your roof
to Georgia Power.
If the PSC approves a pending request.
If you get in before that new quota gets filled.
And if you’re a Georgia Power customer.
The rest of us?
Not until the
1973 Georgia Electric Territorial Act
is changed.
Until then, Georgia will continue to lag way behind New Jersey in solar power.


210 MW is more than 50 MW but way less than 3,000 MW

Walter C. Jones wrote for the Augusta Chronicle today,

Georgia Power plans to triple solar power use,

Georgia Power filed Wednesday seeking permission from state
regulators to more than triple the amount of solar power it uses to
generate electricity for its 2.4 million customers by swapping it
for what was already planned from other renewable sources.

What “other renewable sources”?

The Georgia Power plan won’t affect rates because it is based on
paying the solar providers what it would have paid the biomass
provider, 13 cents per kilowatt hour, which is already figured into
customer’s rates.

OK, that’s good, because it means biomass is well and truly
dead in Georgia.
But it also means Georgia Power isn’t very serious about solar,
if all it’s doing is fiddling with accounting for the small amount
of power biomass might have produced and not going for the real
numbers solar can produce.
OK, how many solar megawatts?

Continue reading →

Southern Company: let’s do the renewable energy study for Georgia

Mark Z. Jacobson's study shows

offshore wind is plentiful from Virginia to Maine
Let's

do the study for Georgia!
Southern Company

brags about its private R&D:

Research & Development (since the 1960s)


  • Awarded more than $1.3 billion to conduct more than $3.8 billion of research and development.
  • Qualified for $412 million of investment tax credits for a 21st century coal plant being built in Mississippi.

OK, SO, let's see you do the study to show what we can really do with



conservation, efficiency, wind, sun, and less natural gas than we have now.
Sure, in the Georgia Bight we do have to contend with hurricanes.
But a

"great, big company"
like SO should be able to focus its vaunted private R&D on that problem and solve it.

Maybe SO doesn't want to do that because the result might show there is no need for
any coal plants, nor new natural gas plants, nor any nuclear plants, which would mean
Georgia Power would have to give up its nuclear-funding rate-hike stealth tax
and SO would have to give up its $8.3 billion loan guarantee.
Hey, we might even need to

change the 1973 Georgia Electric Territorial Act,
and that might damage Georgia Power's guaranteed profit!
Nevermind that Georgia Power and SO might make more profit if they got out
in front on solar and wind power and a smart grid.

If SO won't do it, how about we elect some Public Service Commissioners and legislators who will?
For

jobs, energy independence, and profit, oh, and clean air and plenty of water!

-jsq

All U.S. east coast electricity could come from offshore wind 3 seasons out of 4

Why build nukes when wind can provide 3/4 of our power?
While Southern Company claims to be

“a company that is engaged in offering solutions, not just rhetoric”,
yet

does nothing about wind off the Georgia coast,


researchers in far California have demonstrated we can get
3/4 of all needed east coast electricity from offshore wind.

Bjorn Carey wrote for Stanford Report 14 September 2012,

Offshore wind energy could power entire U.S. East Coast, Stanford scientists say

A new analysis by Stanford researchers reveals that there is enough
offshore wind along the U.S. East Coast to meet the electricity
demands of at least one-third of the country.



The scientists paid special attention to the Maine-to-Virginia
corridor; the historical lack of strong hurricanes in the region
makes it a favorable site for offshore wind turbines. They found
that turbines placed there could satisfy the peak-time power needs
of these states for three seasons of the year (summer is the
exception).

“We knew there was a lot of wind out there, but this is the first
actual quantification of the total resource and the time of day that
the resource peaks,” said Mark Z. Jacobson, a professor of civil and
environmental engineering at Stanford who directed the research.
“This provides practical information to wind farm developers about
the best areas to place turbines.”



Mark Z. Jacobson already worked out a framework for

powering the entire world from wind, water, and sun alone.
The late
John Blackburn, Ph.D., showed us how

to power North Carolina with sun, wind, and hydro,
plus less natural gas than NC uses now.
Now Jacobson is working out the details of implementation.

-jsq



PS: Owed to Seth Gunning.