Category Archives: CWIP

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 →

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 →

Another $3.5 billion nuclear cost overruns coming —David Staples @ HBA 2012-10-18



David A. Staples
running for the Georgia Public Service Commission for District 5,
talked about the ethical conflicts of the incumbents who take
almost all of their campaign contributions from people associated
with the utilities they regulate.
Then he mentioned that the new nuclear reactors Georgia Power
is building for Southern Company at Plant Vogtle
have
another $3.5 billion in cost overruns coming.

This is after

the PSC incumbents just rubberstamped the Vogtle budget in August,
and on top of the

$900 million in cost overruns we already knew about.
That $900 million was already more than 6% of the originally-projected $14 billion
total cost.
If it’s now $3.5 + $0.9 = $4.4 billion, that’s more than 31% over
the original total.
Maybe we should vote in some PSC members and legislators who will stop this nonsense.

Here’s

the video:

Continue reading →

Elect Georgia Public Service Commissioners to represent you


GA PSC
The Georgia Public Service Commission decides how much you pay for energy.
If you’re tired of Georgia Power’s

three-legged nuclear regulatory-capture stool
and
Georgia lagging far behind other states in solar and wind energy,
or you just want

PSC members who will represent you
and who do not

accept massive campaign contributions from the utilities they regulate
or their employees or lawyers
like the incumbents do;
the incumbents who can’t even be bothered to show up for debates
or to answer questionnaires.


David Staples for GA PSC

Steve Oppenheimer for GA PSC
Here are two GA PSC challengers who did answer a questionnaire:

Democrat Steve Oppenheimer
and

Libertarian David Staples.
Early voting has already started:
you can vote for them today.


let the sun shine on Georgia
While you’re at it, you can

vote for statehouse legislators who will let the sun shine on Georgia.

-jsq

GA PSC questionnaire answers: Steve Oppenheimer


Steve Oppenheimer
The Georgia Sierra Club sent a questionnaire to all candidates for
Georgia Public Service Commission.
None of the incumbents answered.
The two challengers did.
Here’s the one from
Steve Oppenheimer
for District 3.
-jsq

  1. As a Candidate for Public Service Commission, what is your campaign strategy for achieving 50% +1 of the votes cast?

    [I’m omitting the answers to this question. -jsq]

  2. How should the Public Service Commission consider and
    weight the impacts to community health (asthma, cancer rates, etc.)
    and on Georgia’s environmental (water quantity, air quality etc.)
    when making decisions about a utility’s generation portfolio?

    The PSC has a major role shaping energy policy for Georgia. I would
    like to schedule PSC hearings on the relationship of power
    production and our air, water, morbidity and mortality and our
    general quality of life. My professional background in dentistry &
    health care provides a keen understanding of the relationship of
    power generation and health. Dr David Satcher, former US Surgeon
    General and Executive Director Satcher Health Leadership Institute
    at Morehouse University has become a friend and part of my
    professional network during the campaign. I would like to see PSC
    convene hearings on the topic. Georgians for a Healthy Future, a
    relatively new, broad based, organization would provide another
    forum for discussion of these issues. Membership in Georgians for a
    Healthy Future includes Georgia Legislators on both sides of the
    aisle. The PSC must be a leader on these issues—as the
    legislature as a body will likely not be progressive on these
    issues.

Continue reading →

GA PSC questionnaire: David Staples


David Staples
The Georgia Sierra Club sent a questionnaire to all candidates for
Georgia Public Service Commission.
None of the incumbents answered.
The two challengers did.
Here’s the one from
David A. Staples for District 5.
-jsq

  1. As a Candidate for Public Service Commission, what is your
    campaign strategy for achieving 50% +1 of the votes cast?

    [I’m omitting the answers to this question. -jsq]

  2. How should the Public Service Commission consider and weight the
    impacts to community
    health (asthma, cancer rates, etc.) and on Georgia’s environmental
    (water quantity, air quality
    etc.) when making decisions about a utility’s generation portfolio?

    Impacts to community health and the environment have to be considered
    very carefully. I know
    there are a number of different ways of viewing the situation but the
    explanation I’ve found
    that works best with Republicans in trying to get their support is that
    it comes down to a private
    property matter. The right to swing ones fist ends at the other
    person’s nose. Does anyone have
    the right to pollute the air that I breathe or the water that I drink?

    If I buy a piece of property for
    instance along the Savannah River or Ogeechee River, does someone
    upstream from me have
    the right to pollute the water that then flows onto my land, carrying
    those pollutants with it?

    Absolutely not.

Continue reading →