Category Archives: Renewable Energy

Solar Darien

Darien can also do solar panels at a wastewater treatment plant:

Pat Prokop reported for WTOC 4 August 2011,

Darien water treatment plant gets solar panels:



A McIntosh County water treatment plant is going green and saving hundreds
of dollars in utility bills.

The city of Darien’s wastewater treatment plant outfitted the facility
with solar panels. The city was able to invest more than $1 million
on renovations and upgrades to the wastewater collection system, lift
stations and treatment plant.

Prokop put a bunch of pictures on facebook.

Where did Darien get the money?

Continue reading →

Let’s put Lowndes County on the Clean Economy Map!

Look where

those clean economy jobs are:

Among regions, the South has the largest number of clean economy jobs
though the West has the largest share relative to its population. Seven
of the 21 states with at least 50,000 clean economy jobs are in the
South. Among states, California has the highest number of clean jobs
but Alaska and Oregon have the most per worker.



A per-county map is included, on which you can see North Carolina
and Atlanta, but nothing in south Georgia.
Let’s put Lowndes County on the clean energy map!

The gigaom article recommends:

To help boost the clean energy economy even more, the Brookings report
suggests that Congress could pass a national clean energy standard, put
a price on carbon, use the government as a chief customer of cleantech
goods (Obama has been strong on this), find more ways to help proven
clean technologies pass the so-called Valley of Death, as well as
increase funding for basic science and early-stage high risk projects
(like the Department of Energy’s ARPA-E program).



That’s good stuff, but we don’t have to wait for the feds.
The

Wiregrass Solar plant
sets a precedent that we can build on.
That plant is readily

expandable to an additional megawatt.


It can also be used to attract financing for other projects,
projects that can use local labor, for example

solar electricity and hot water like the example in Quitman.

Lots of places have forged ahead into real clean energy on their own,
such as
Birmingham, England
and

San Antonio.

Sure, we’re not nearly as big as those places, or so local “leaders” remind me.
So let’s find some projects of our scale that we can do, and let’s do them!
A real leader might say, as

Mayor Julian Castro of San Antonio did, that
renewable energy is



“…the nexus between sustainability and job creation. Every now
and then, perhaps once in a generation, there presents itself a moment,
an opportunity, for those cities that are willing to seize it, to truly
benefit the region for generations to come.”

That opportunity is right here in south Georgia, waiting for us to seize it.

-jsq

Clean jobs exceeding fossil fuel jobs

Qualified good news.

Katie Fehrenbacher wrote 12 July 2011 for gigaom,

The clean economy employs more workers than fossil fuels,



The green technology and clean power industries are currently employing
more workers than their dirty fossil fuel peers. That’s according to a
report released from the

Brookings Institution, which has crunched the
numbers of jobs created in the U.S. by sectors like solar, wind, waste
water recycling, public transportation and energy efficiency retrofits.

Qualified because Brookings includes not only wastewater and mass transit
(good stuff, albeit a bit odd fit) but also biomass (ick).

However, even during the recession,

…newer clean economy establishments— especially those in young
energy-related segments such as wind energy, solar PV, and smart
grid—added jobs at a torrid pace, albeit from small bases.

Not just jobs, but good-paying jobs:

The clean economy offers more opportunities and better pay for low- and
middle-skilled workers than the national economy as a whole. Median
wages in the clean economy—meaning those in the middle of the
distribution—are 13 percent higher than median U.S. wages. Yet a
disproportionate percentage of jobs in the clean economy are staffed by
workers with relatively little formal education in moderately well-paying
“green collar” occupations.

Yeah, but what does that mean to us?
See

next post.

-jsq

gapower to buy 50 MW solar by 2015

Previously I wrote

PSC lining up to vote for solar
and last week they went and did it.


Georgia Power will buy solar by 2015,
By Associated Press – Athens Banner-Herald, 24 July 2011:



ATLANTA — The Public Service Commission has approved Georgia
Power’s plans to buy up to 50 megawatts of solar power by 2015.

The utility plans to strike agreements with individual solar-power
producers to meet the deadline. The providers would have to be able
to connect to the transmission system for Georgia Power or its sister
utilities in Alabama, Florida and Mississippi.

Continue reading →

Because of my mother —Dr. Noll @ VLCIA 19 July 2011



Dr. Noll, president of WACE, welcomed VLCIA’s new executive director Andrea Schruijer, and
then reminded the board that the honking cars outside
indicated an ongoing community assessment of biomass,
and he encouraged them to consider previously presented
materials and to prevent the biomass plant from
finding a back door to come back in.

He remarked that he had visited his mother in Germany:

One and half years ago she was in the intensive care unit for about three weeks
because she had severe lung issues.
She moved away after that
to an area where there isn’t the kind of air pollution she was
exposed to before hand,
and every single day she wakes up she feels like she’s on vacation.

Here’s

the video:




Because of my mother —Dr. Noll @ VLCIA 19 July 2011

Regular Meeting, Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority (VLCIA),

Norman Bennett, Tom Call, Roy Copeland chairman, Mary Gooding, Jerry Jennett,

Andrea Schruijer Executive Director, J. Stephen Gupton attorney, Allan Ricketts Project Manager,

Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 19 July 2011.

Videos by John S. Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.

-jsq

Three things to actually improve education —John S. Quarterman

People ask me why I oppose CUEE.
It’s because I’d rather actually improve education instead.

It seems to me the burden of proof is on the people proposing
to make massive changes in the local education system.
And CUEE has not provided any evidence for their position.
Sam Allen of Friends of Valdosta City Schools (FVCS)

pithily sums up CUEE:

“It’s not about the children. It’s about somebody’s ego.”



I don’t think the children should have to suffer for somebody’s ego.

CUEE’s unification push isn’t about education.
It’s about

a “unified platform” to attract industry.
That alone is enough reason to oppose “unification”.
It’s not about education!

As former Industrial Authority Chair Jerome Tucker has been
heard to remark on numerous occassions, “nobody ever asked me how
many school systems we had!”
The only example in Georgia CUEE points to for this is the Kia
plant that came to Troup County, Georgia.
It’s funny how
none of the locals seem to have mentioned any such connection in the numerous articles published about the Kia plant.
Instead, the mayor of the town with the Kia plant complains that his town
doesn’t have a high school.
That’s right: he’s complaining that the school system is too
consolidated!
The only actual education between Kia and education in Troup County
is

with West Georgia Tech, the local technical college.

CUEE has finally cobbled together an education committee, but

it won’t even report back before the proposed ballot referendum vote.
CUEE has no plan to improve education.

If CUEE actually did want to help the disadvantaged in the Valdosta
City schools,

Continue reading →

Chinese Solar Companies Thrive on Manufacturing Innovations

Here in south Georgia we don’t even need to innovate manufacturing,
we merely need to implement.
Yet Georgia’s solar manufacturers

Suniva and

MAGE SOLAR are innovating.
And we can innovate in deployment.

Kevin Bullis wrote in MIT Technology Review today,


Chinese Solar Companies Thrive on Manufacturing Innovations:

Suntech Power’s CTO argues that the secret to China’s success is not
cheap labor but advanced equipment for making solar cells.

Five years ago only one of the 10 largest solar cell producers was based
in China. But by last year, four of the top five were based there, and
each is growing fast: all four doubled their production last year. It’s
widely believed that this success is due to low labor costs, but Stuart
Wenham, CTO of the largest solar cell maker in China, Suntech Power,
argues that the real causes are advances in manufacturing technology
that have improved solar cells’ performance and cut costs.

How about this part:

Continue reading →

Google says delaying solar will cost U.S. millions of jobs

If it’s true for the country, it’s true for south Georgia.
So moving ahead with solar will gain jobs.

David Worthington wrote for smartplanet 28 June 2011,

Google: delay on renewables will cost U.S. trillions, over million jobs:



Google has published an

analysis of the economic benefits of renewable
energy innovation. It has concluded that even a five year lapse without
a national clean energy policy would

cost the United States an aggregate
US$2.3-3.2 trillion in unrealized GDP gains and 1.2-1.4 million net jobs.

The study was about renewable energy in general, but:

Continue reading →

Sumter County may go solar: where’s Lowndes County?

Sumter County gets it about solar power, independence and jobs.
Where’s Lowndes County?

So how big is this

National Solar project that Sumter County may get?
Steve Leone wrote for Renewable Energy World,

Seven Communities Waiting for the Sun in Southeastern U.S.:



The project will be a network of 20 solar farms, each of which will
span 200 acres and generate 20 MW. It would be much larger than the 80
MW solar power plant in Ontario, Canada, currently the world’s largest.

The finalists are:



The communities selected by National Solar Power as finalists to become
the location of the development are Gadsden, Hardee, Osceola and Suwannee
counties in Florida, Sumter and Tatnall counties in Georgia and Guilford
County in North Carolina.

And Lowndes County isn’t even in the running.
Why not?

Continue reading →

Sumter County in running for 20 MegaWatt solar farm

Sumter County gets it that solar means energy, independence, and jobs.


Sharinda Williams wrote for WALB 29 June 2011,

Sumter in Final seven for new solar plant:



Sumter county is in the running of being the home of the worlds largest
solar power farm.

WALB spoke with a representative of the company National Solar that
explained how if chosen for this new development it can impact the
area greatly.

Sumter county is one of 7 areas in the southeast that will be chosen to
house the new solar farm.

This farm has the potential of adding hundreds of jobs as well as giving
cleaner cheaper energy to over 32 thousand homes.

-jsq

PS: This post owed to Clayton Freeman.