What to do if you can’t interest Georgia Power in building solar?
Do it yourself, and do enough so you can be a utility yourself.
That’s the loophole in the 1973
Electric Territorial Act
that FPL and JEA use to burn coal at Plant Scherer in Georgia and export the power to Florida.
Now Georgia Solar Utilities Inc. is using the loophole for a better purpose:
building almost twice as much solar generation
as Georgia Power’s meager 50 MW.
Dave Williams wrote for the Atlanta Business Chronicle yesterday
New Georgia utility pitches solar plant:
A new utility is planning to build a $320 million solar power plant on 2,200 acres adjacent to Georgia Power Co’s coal-burning Plant Branch near Milledgeville, Ga.
Georgia Solar Utilities Inc. initially approached Georgia Power, a
unit of Southern Co. (NYSE: SO), with a proposal to build the plant
and sell it to Georgia Power through a power-purchasing agreement.Georgia Power is retiring two coal-fired units at Plant Branch, part
of a move to reduce the Atlanta-based utility’s reliance on coal.But when Georgia Power officials declined to take part in the
project last May, Georgia Solar Utilities executives decided to
build the plant on their own and operate it as a new utility
independent of Georgia Power.Once cost prohibitive, solar energy has become competitive with
fossil fuels because of the rising costs of coal and tighter
government regulation of coal emissions, said Robert Green, founder
of Georgia Solar Utilities.“When you don’t have to buy coal or worry about environmental
hangovers, it overwhelms the costs of fossil fuels, Green said
Thursday after presenting the proposal to the Georgia Public Service
Commission’s Energy Committee.
Some say the PSC can’t approve such a utility because of that 1973 law.
I suspect that if they don’t approve this proposal, the next one
will be even harder to turn down, and the next one,
as they become even more competitive.
How competitive?
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