Tag Archives: Economy

Live streaming of Public Service Commission Forum tonight

All candidates for the Georgia Public Service Commission at a forum tonight, 7-9PM 12 July 2012. GA PSC is the body that says Georgia Power can charge its customers for cost overruns for the new nukes at Plant Vogtle; the new nukes that will suck up even more water and are already sucking up lots of money through the stealth tax Construction Work in Progress (CWIP) charge on Georgia Power customer bills. GA PSC did require Georgia Power to buy 50 MW of solar, but that’s pennies compared to the dollars Georgia Power and Southern Company are shovelling into that pit by the Savannah River. Who will stand up and say enough nuclear is too much, and let’s get on with solar and wind?

Georgia Interfaith Power and Light blogged today, PSC Debate Tonight,

Tonight, GIPL is joining forces with 14 local organizations to host a Political Forum with this year’s candidates for the Public Service Commission.

We’re having technical difficulties with the live web stream. We hope it will be up and running tonight, but if not, the debate will be posted online this week. You can check this website tonight at 7pm for live web streaming, or watch our twitter feed @GeorgiaIPL for updates.

When: Thursday, July 12, 7 – 9 p.m.
Where: Glenn Memorial UMC’s Auditorium/Sanctuary
1660 N. Decatur Road
Atlanta, GA 30307

All four challengers in the 2012 race have confirmed their attendance. Participants

Continue reading →

AP nuclear slant through omission

What's missing in AP's reporting and analysis of nuclear cost overruns?

AP published this Tuesday, News Guide: Nuclear industry facing cost pressures, perhaps as a companion to its story of the same day, Building costs increase at US nuclear sites. Like that story, the news guide is full of accurate and useful information about nuclear cost overruns, and even this good bit of analysis:

Q: Why do building costs matter to customers?

A: Because customers ultimately pay for the construction costs as part of their monthly power bills. The more a plant costs, the more customers will pay.

Yep, Georgia Power customers are already paying through that stealth tax, the construction work in progress (CWIP) charge for new nuke electricity they won't get for years if ever.

Yet something is missing. Can you spot it?

Hint:

Q: How does that compare with building coal- or gas-powered plants?

Good question, and AP correctly answers that nuclear plants are far pricier than coal or gas plants.

But are those three the only sources of energy? Where is the comparison to solar and wind power?

Well, maybe AP won't do it, but here it is already, Georgia Power deploys 1 MW solar; could have done 330 MW by now. Short version: for less than the amount of federal loan guarantees for Plant Vogtle, Southern Company could have built Georgia more solar energy production per capita than Germany, the world leader, has.

Why are we letting Georgia Power and the Southern Company pour our money down that pit near the Savannah River when they could be spending it to deploy solar and wind for more jobs, energy independence, and more profit for Georgia Power and SO? Oh, and clean air and plenty of clean water, too.

-jsq

Unemployed need public transit to get to jobs: T-SPLOST doesn’t help

If you're unemployed, you may not be able to afford a car: then how do you get to work even if you can find a job? As our own Industrial Authority's Community Assessment of last October said, we need public transportation to promote business by getting employees to jobs. T-SPLOST doesn't do that: it would widen more roads and build no public transportation.

Peter S. Goodman wrote for Huffington Post today, Unemployment Problem Includes Public Transportation That Separates Poor From Jobs

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. — In the two months since he lost his job driving a delivery truck for a door company, Lebron Stinson has absorbed a bitter geography lesson about this riverfront city: The jobs are in one place, he is in another, and the bus does not bridge the divide.

Stinson lives downtown, where many of the factories that once employed willing hands have been converted into chic eateries. The majority of jobs are out in the suburbs, in the strip malls, office parks and chain restaurants that stretch eastward. Most of this sprawl lies beyond reach of the public bus system, and Stinson cannot afford a car.

The report Janus Economic did for VLCIA 11 October 2011, Community & Economic Assessment: Lowndes County says:

There is a plan for a public transportation system in Valdosta-Lowndes County but it currently lacks funding for implementation. Under current budget constraints it will be difficult to implement such a project, but businesses in the industrial parks and outlying areas may want to implement a limited transportation system if they discover that employee attendance is an issue.

That would be the plan for $7.5 million for a four line bus system that got cut first pass from the T-SPLOST project list, while widening a few miles of Old US 41 North got raised from $8 million to $12 million and is still in the final list.

T-SPLOST would promote more sprawl of exactly the kind we don't need. Let's not do that.

-jsq

Southern Co. nuclear cost overruns expected? Let’s build solar and wind on time and on budget!

So if Southern Company expected cost overruns at Plant Vogtle, why didn’t they make a better estimate in the first place? What incentive do they have not to continue running up the cost and delaying completion, since they get to keep charging Georgia Power customers for construction, including for cost overruns, while floating $8.3 billion in federally guaranteed loans? Where is the financial integrity in all that?

AP reported yesterday, and even Fox News carried it, Building costs increase at US nuclear sites. They’re not talking about housing prices near the sites, either.

America’s first new nuclear plants in more than a decade are costing billions more to build and sometimes taking longer to deliver than planned, problems that could chill the industry’s hopes for a jumpstart to the nation’s new nuclear age.

Licensing delay charges, soaring construction expenses and installation glitches as mundane as misshapen metal bars have driven up the costs of three plants in Georgia, Tennessee and South Carolina, from hundreds of millions to as much as $2 billion, according to an Associated Press analysis of public records and regulatory filings.

Those problems, along with jangled nerves from last year’s meltdown in Japan and the lure of cheap natural gas, could discourage utilities from sinking cash into new reactors, experts said. The building slowdown would be another blow to the so-called nuclear renaissance, a drive over the past decade to build 30 new reactors to meet the country’s growing power needs. Industry watchers now say that only a handful will be built this decade.

“People are looking at these things very carefully,” said Richard Lester, head of the department of nuclear science and engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Inexpensive gas alone, he said, “is casting a pretty long shadow over the prospects” for construction of new nuclear plants.

AP continues with a list of late and over-budget nuke projects, including Southern Company’s Plant Vogtle $800 million over and seven months late, TVA’s Watts Bar plant $2 billion over and 3 years late, Duke’s Plant Summer SCANA and Santee Cooper’s Summer Station $670 million over and a year late.

Southern Co. and others in the nuclear business say cost overruns are expected in projects this complex…

So why are they wasting our money on nukes when they could be deploying a lot more solar and wind on time and on budget?

…and that they are balanced out by other savings over the life of the plant. Southern Co. expects Plant Vogtle will cost $2 billion less to operate over its 60-year lifetime than initially projected because of anticipated tax breaks and historically low interest rates.

Get that? “anticipated tax breaks” that leave we the taxpayers Continue reading →

Automated solar sizing from Rakuten in Japan

Stateside some of the lengthiest parts of a solar installation are finding an installer and getting them to get around to making an estimate. A Japanese retailer is leverage google maps to do all that online.

Asahi Shimbun wrote today, Rakuten to market home solar power systems via mouse click

Online retailer Rakuten Inc. will begin selling residential solar power generation systems this month priced about 40 percent lower than similar conventional products.

Customers can get a price estimate by accessing the new Rakuten Solar website and clicking on the roof of their house on an aerial photo provided by Google Maps, the company said July 9.

The company will be able to cut costs by eliminating the distribution process.

Prices for a detached house will start at 950,000 yen ($12,000), including installation costs. Taxes are not included.

That’s very reasonable. Although the story doesn’t say what sort of size in kilowatts DC or kilowatt hours AC that $12,000 would buy.

A bit more on how it works, and whether we could do that here:

Continue reading →

Budget, boards, and abandonment @ LCC 2012-06-26

The Lowndes County Commission appointed people to four boards, approved a budget for next fiscal year, made some unspecified changes to this year’s budget, and demonstrated they could both stop speeding traffic on a rural road and put a cap on a construction contract! All this in one meeting, their Regular Session of 26 June 2012.

Here’s the agenda. Here are videos of the previous morning’s Work Session. And here are videos of the 5PM (actually 4:57PM) budget hearing.

Here’s a video playlist:

Budget, boards, and abandonment
Regular Session, Lowndes County Commission (LCC),
Video by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE), Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 26 June 2012.

-jsq

County puts a cap on a construction contract! @ LCC 2012-06-26

The county can put a cap on a construction contract! That's welcome news.

At their 26 June 2012 Regular Session the Lowndes County Commission approved an item listed on the agenda as "9. FY 2010 Community Development Block Grant". They added three qualifications:

  1. That the grant applicant delivers the deed to the Board of Commissioners that is acceptable to the Board of Commissioners.
  2. That the construction contract not exceed 700,000.
  3. That the grant applicant is in agreement with the Board of Commissioners to pay the difference between the grant funds and project costs.

That's all admirable, and quite a difference from the approach the Commission took to another grant-funded project: the no-bid contract with Scruggs Co. for the new Moody AFB gate. Did we the taxpayers ever find out how much the final contract was for and how much the final cost overrun was?

Of course, in this new case, we never learned who the construction contractor was, or whether there were bids, of anything else about the contract. Why doesn't the Commission want us to know such things?

-jsq

 

Started early, no new information, no questions: Second and final budget hearing @ LCC 2012-06-26

Your last chance to hear about the budget for Lowndes County was 26 June 2012, just before the Commission’s Regular Session. It went really fast; even faster than the first budget hearing. And, as you can see, this second hearing started three minutes early: 4:57 Eastern, before the public notice time of 5PM.

Here’s the actual budget. In this second hearing, Finance Director Stephanie Black sped through her slides, so for more explanation see the videos the first budget hearing. This time she did allude to a budget adjustment coming up in the immediately-following Regular Session, but she didn’t say what it was. The second time she mentioned it, she said “We’ve received some information” about a revenue reduction, but she didn’t say what that information was. Commissioners either already knew what it was, or didn’t care, because nobody asked any questions. It’s almost like the Commission doesn’t want us knowing what they’re thinking of doing with our money until they’ve already decided.

See also the previous post about Public Works expenditures.

Here’s a video playlist:

Second and final budget hearing, Lowndes County Commission (LCC), Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 26 June 2012
Videos by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE).

-jsq

Public Works Expenditures @ LCC 2012-06-26

Sheriff’s Office $0.35
Public Works (Facilities, Road Maintenance, Road Construction) $0.15
Court Services $0.11
Board of Commissioners and Administration $0.08
Recreation Authority (VLPRA) $0.07
Industrial Authority (VLCIA) $0.06
Other — including outside agency support $0.04
Tax Commissioner $0.03
Board of Assessors $0.03
Ambulance Service $0.02
Other Emergency Services (EMA, Coroner, Emergency Telecommunications) $0.02
Election Services $0.01
Engineering Services $0.01
Contingency $0.01
Animal Control Services $0.01

On the county’s web pages Finance Director Stephanie Black has made available Where does your money go? She narrated that table in the 26 June 2012 Second Budget Hearing. Here it is in plain text on the right. I’ve taken the liberty of sorting it by largest expenditures first.

That order is more or less what she showed in this pie chart, although the categories don’t quite seem to match. In the pie chart, public safety (Sheriff) and court services are lumped together, so they make the biggest slice. In the table, the second biggest category is “Public Works (Facilities, Road Maintenance, Road Construction)”. Hm, so how much do we spend on road construction?

-jsq

One Japanese nuclear reactor back online

Not surprising, but quite possibly not a good idea. Mari Yamaguchi wrote for AP yesterday, Japan powered by nuclear energy again, blamed anew,

Nuclear power returned to Japan’s energy mix for the first time in two months Thursday, hours before a parliamentary panel blamed the government’s cozy relations with the industry for the meltdowns that prompted the mass shutdown of the nation’s reactors.

Though the report echoes other investigations into last year’s disaster at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant, it could fuel complaints that Japan is trying to restart nuclear reactors without doing enough to avoid a repeat. Thursday’s resumption of operations at a reactor in Ohi, in western Japan, already had been hotly contested.

Government officials and the utility that runs the Ohi plant announced last month that the No. 3 reactor had passed stringent safety checks and needed to be brought back online to ward off blackouts during the high-demand summer months. Another Ohi reactor, No. 4, is set to restart later this month and the government hopes to restart more of Japan’s 50 working reactors as soon as possible.

“We have finally taken this first step,” said Hideki Toyomatsu, vice president of Kansai Electric Power Co., which operates the Ohi plant. “But it is just a first step.”

Maybe they’re like Southern Company (SO) CEO Thomas A. Fanning,who said he’d Continue reading →