Tag Archives: CEMC

Most of June electric bill for overbudget nuke, yet the sun rises

While electric bills still are tilted against local solar generation

300x225 CWIP on electric bill, in Most of June electric bill for overbudget nuke, by Bret Wagenhorst, 11 June 2015
and Georgia Power continues to levy its stealth CWIP tax for its
nuke boondoggle, yet solar power is rising this year on
Southern Company and Georgia Power.

Bret Wagenhorst posted on facebook 9 June 2015:

I find it decidedly ironic that a large portion of my last month
electric bill went toward paying for a nuclear power plant that is
hundreds of millions of dollars over budget, and which will no doubt
cost millions of dollars a year to run and to manage its potentially
deadly waste. I wonder if the money spent on the nuclear plant were
used to purchase rooftop solar panels for all certified energy
efficient Georgian homes if we citizens might not be better off in
the long run. Thoughts?

Look for

Nuclear Construction Cost Recovery Rider on that bill: Continue reading →

Videos of the landfill gas energy meeting 2013-04-15



Since LAKE was the only coverage of the

Pecan Row Landfill Gas Energy meeting 15 April 2013 at Colquitt EMC in Valdosta,
these videos let you see the interesting cast of speakers and other attendees.





Our host,

Danny Nichols, Colquitt EMC General Manager, expressed concerns about
feel-good vs. economically viable energy projects and said he
thought the landfill gas project was both, emphasizing “like a
switch it comes on”, in other words, baseload.
(Colquitt EMC is

not big on smart grid.)

Continue reading →

Atlanta trash and TVA coal ash to be shipped to Lowndes County?



Did you know we already have coal ash in our Lowndes County landfill?

And where will the trash come from for that landfill gas project,
subject of

the meeting 8:30 AM tomorrow morning at the Colquitt EMC office in Valdosta?
Atlanta, or even farther north (or south)?
And what will be in it: coal ash like Taylor County’s landfill,
with arsenic and lead?

As we’ve seen,

GreenPower EMC’s previous two landfill gas projects seem to be in Taylor
County, Georgia.
What none of GreenPower, ESG, ADS, or Colquitt EMC seem to have mentioned
is that much of the trash in the landfill in Mauk, Taylor County,
between Machon and Columbus,
appears to come from farther north.

Jeffry Scott wrote for the AJC 24 October 2003,

MAKING ROOM FOR GARBAGE: Landfill battles pile up: Rural areas targeted for urban trash,

Continue reading →

Green Power EMC landfill gas projects



As

we saw,
ESG’s Pecan Row Landfill Gas Facility flash flyer
quotes Jeff Pratt, President of Green Power EMC, who said this is Green Power
EMC’s third landfill energy project.
Curiously, Green Power EMC’s Landfill Gas Project page doesn’t
list the other two, and its
FAQ is apparently out of date, saying “Currently, our one landfill gas-to-electricity projects generate a combined four megawatts of power.”
However, the other two appear to be:

Continue reading →

Landfill gas energy meeting Monday morning


Pecan Row Landfill Gas Facility

Received Friday as a PDF. -jsq

Valdosta, Ga. (April 11, 2013) — Representatives from

Advanced Disposal,

Green Power EMC and

Energy Systems Group (ESG) will hold an informational
session about the Pecan Row Landfill Gas Facility on April 15 at 8:30 a.m. EST
at the

Colquitt EMC Valdosta District Office, located at 273 Norman Drive.

The cover page seems to be condensed from
ESG’s Pecan Row Landfill Gas Facility flash flyer.
That ESG flyer also quotes Gerald Allen, Landfill Vice President , Advanced Disposal, and Jeff Pratt, President of Green Power EMC, who said this is Green Power
EMC’s third landfill energy project.

The rest past the paragraph above quoted seems to be verbatim from Continue reading →

Just say no to biomass –VDT to VLCIA

VDT reported on

Biomass plant misses deadlines,
but what do they really think?
The title is my paraphrase of Sunday’s editorial title,

It’s all up to the Industrial Authority:



In two months, less than 60 days away, Wiregrass Power LLC is supposed to
break ground on the biomass facility in Lowndes County. By now, they are
supposed to have contracts with power companies to sell the electricity
to and with suppliers to purchase the wood waste. They have neither,
nor does the company have an agreement with the city of Valdosta to
purchase the wastewater from the sewage treatment plant.

Well, the City of Valdosta could

refuse to sell the wastewater.
And maybe the Lowndes County Commission could exercise its

fiduciary responsibility.
But, sure, the Industrial Authority could just say no.


And yet the folks at the Industrial Authority appear to be rather
nonchalant about the fact that this company has yet again broken its
agreement. They have the power to renogiate the terms of the agreement and
they also have the power to cancel it, but neither is happening. Instead,
they are giving the company all the leeway they need to continue dragging
this project along that the community doesn’t want.

Folks?
Like Col. Ricketts?
But remember, he and

Lame-Duck Lofton
are only

Continue reading →

Biomass plant misses deadlines –VDT

David Rodock writes on the front page of the Sunday VDT today
(the highest profile news source for the region) that

Biomass plant misses deadlines:
Will the plant move forward?



The Wiregrass Power LLC biomass facility was supposed to have met a number
of project goals established by the Economic Development Agreement (EDA)
between the company and the Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority
by April 1, 2011. According to Allen Ricketts, Industrial Authority
project manager, those goals still have yet to be met.

The specific goals in the agreement were that a “finalized engineering
procurement construction contract” would be ready by March 31. By
April 1, the company was supposed to have finalized both a power
purchase/transmission agreement along with a wastewater/biosolids
agreement.

They’ve been slipping deadlines for quite some time.
According to page 4 of that EDA (which you can see for yourself

on the LAKE web site):

Continue reading →

State Energy Strategy of Georgia

Among the questions local citizens asked the
Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority (VLCIA) was

where is the south Georgia, state, or southeast U.S. renewable energy strategy?
VLCIA Project Manager Allan Ricketts looked, and he couldn’t find it, either.


He did find
this list of “renewable energy strategy”
hits from a GEFA search.
At least one of those links points us to http://www.georgiaenergyplan.org/,
which now gets us

Are you interested in buying this domain name?

The state has apparently abandoned that domain.
Is that an indication of how seriously Georgia takes renewable energy?

Here’s something that looks promising:

State Energy Strategy for Georgia (SESG),
December 14, 2006, Governor’s Energy Policy Council, GEFA.
It says it’s an energy strategy, but it’s mostly
about transportation of existing fuels such as natural gas.
Towards the end of the document in Figure 2 (shown above) the SESG illustrates
the pit we’re in: about a third of Georgia’s energy comes from coal,
another third from petroleum, a sixth from natural gas, and so little
from renewable sources they apparently weren’t worth putting on the pie chart.

The SESG does contain this:

Continue reading →

Solar and Georgia Electric Member Corporations

Connect the panels
John Oxford writes in the Moultrie Observer about
Green energy at Expo:

Although no solar panels have been installed in Colquitt County yet, Park said they and other green power sources are gaining popularity in Georgia. Solar panels have been installed by EMCs across the state , and EMC is looking to more ways to make use of otherwise wasted materials.

Well, maybe not in Colquitt County, but
Colquitt EMC has a grid tie to a solar installation in Lowndes County.

PS: The Moultrie Observer has the most annoying online ad on that page that I’ve run into in a long time.

Price of Doing Nothing Could Be High



I’m not sure this is what the Valdosta-Lowndes County Chamber of Commerce wanted to hear, but it’s something that could benefit all of us:

Bruce Bailey, energy conservation advisor for Colquitt EMC, said, “Conserving energy and making things more energy efficient is much more cost effective than having to build a new power plant to supply more power, so we are recommending that as a leading public policy. If our future does include more and more conversions to renewable energy sources, it’s going to be very important that we don’t short-circuit our economy in the short term.”

Bailey said it’s important that any policies implemented utilize proven and effective technologies, and he warned that the price for doing nothing could be high.

Story by Matt Flumerfelt in the
VDT, 15 Oct 2009.