Tag Archives: Economy

Georgia missing out on solar jobs behind New Jersey and Michigan



Other states, even New Jersey and far-north Michigan,
are beating Georgia to solar jobs.
Why isn’t sunny Georgia leading in one of the fastest-growing industries in the country that is deploying rural jobs everywhere else?
Hint: who’s

holding a shareholder meeting this month?

Carin Hall wrote for energydigital 13 May 2013,

Solar Jobs Outnumber Texas Ranchers and US Coal Miners:
New statistics show that solar is one of the fastest growing industries in the US, creating thousands of jobs across the country

There are now more solar energy workers in the state of Texas than
there are ranchers, according to solar research group The Solar
Foundation.

The group’s data mapping out solar jobs across the nation also
showed that there are more solar jobs in California than actors, and
more solar workers than coal miners nationwide. Sunny states like
California and Arizona topped the list. Wyoming came in last, with
just 50 workers, while Utah showed a mere 290 solar workers despite
being one of the country’s sunniest states.

Even the states with less sunshine like New Jersey and Michigan
showed a high number of solar jobs—thanks to favorable tax and
regulatory policies that help attract developers to cope with high
electricity prices.



New Jersey is #9 and Michigan is #15 according to

The Solar Foundation’s map of State Solar Jobs.
Where’s Georgia?
Number 41 in solar jobs per capita.
Yet Michigan is #47 by maximum solar resource and New Jersey is #36,
while Georgia is #18: much sunnier than those northern states.
Why is Georgia so far behind?

LEGAL STATUS OF THIRD-PARTY OWNERSHIP: NOT ALLOWED

Because of Continue reading →

110 MW solar financing: SolarCity and Goldman Sachs

When Goldman Sachs gets in, you know there’s money in solar.
They’re certainly not investing half a billion dollars for your health.
Of course, if you’re in Georgia, you won’t be getting any of this
110 MW of SolarCity solar on your roof, because of that

antique 1973 Territorial Electric Service Act
that

Georgia Power and Southern Company keep propping up.
Maybe we should

do something about that.
-jsq



PR today,

SolarCity and Goldman Sachs Create Largest U.S. Rooftop Solar Lease Financing Platform:
Collaboration Expected to Fund more than $500 Million in Solar Projects, 110 Megawatts of Solar Capacity


SAN MATEO, Calif., and NEW YORK, May 16, 2013—SolarCity
(Nasdaq: SCTY), a leading provider of clean energy, today announced
a lease financing agreement with Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS) to fund
more than $500 million in solar power projects; an estimated 110
megawatts in generation capacity for homeowners and businesses.

The financing makes it possible for homeowners, businesses,
government and other non-profit organizations to install solar
panels with no upfront cost and pay less for clean electricity than
they currently pay for utility bills. The agreement was initiated in
2012 and expanded per

Continue reading →

No San Onofre nuke startup decision until June at least –NRC Chair



Two more victories for anti-nuke activists:
San Onofre restart decision pushed back at least until June,
and webcasts of California Public Utilities Commission hearings going on right now.

Abby Sewell reported for the L.A. Times yesterday,

Decision on San Onofre pushed back to June at the earliest,

The plant’s operator Southern California Edison had hoped at one
point to have one of the plant’s two units operating by summer, but
NRC Chairwoman Allison Macfarlane made it clear that will not
happen.

Macfarlane told reporters Tuesday after a speech, “You know, the
process is very complicated now. Almost every day it gets a little
more complicated…. Right now I can tell you a decision on restart
won’t happen until the end of June, certainly after the middle of
June.

“It may get pushed back later,” she said. “I don’t know.”

She didn’t say much about the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board (ASLB)

decision to require NRC public hearings before any decision on
restarting San Onofre,
but she did say this:

Continue reading →

Paving questioned @ LCC 2013-05-13

Commissioners asked a few questions about the half a million
for paving with no apparent competition at yesterday morning’s

Lowndes County Commission Work Session.

Mike Fletcher, County Engineer
Maybe you have more questions; you could ask them tonight at the Regular Session.
You’ll have to catch them before the session starts, because you don’t get to speak
in the session until after they vote.

8. Bid – Soil cement, bituminous prime (with sand), and paving for Bayhill Drive, Pinewood Drive, Grand Pine Drive, Glenn Hill Drive, Bay Wood Drive, Bemiss Knights Academy Road North, a portion of Old Bemiss Road, Payton Place, and Dodd Road


Kari Sands, Purchasing Director
Purchasing Director Kari L. Sands said staff recommendation is to award
the bid to Scruggs Company for $495,845.
No other bids were mentioned.
County Engineer Mike Fletcher said the money was already received from the
LMIG program.

LMIG is Continue reading →

May LAKE meeting tonight

Same agenda as in January, local governance: Water, trash, and money.

What: Monthly LAKE Meeting
When: about 6PM Tuesday

(after the County Commission meeting)

14 May 2013
Where: Let's Eat Cafe

2102 W. Hill Ave.

Valdosta, GA 31601

(just west of I-75,
at the Shell station)

Don't let the location fool you:
Let's Eat is locally owned, and serves a lot of locally-grown food.

If you're on Facebook,
please Like the

LAKE facebook page.
You can sign up for

the meeting event there,
or just come as you are.

-jsq

NRC tries to ignore hearing requirement for San Onofre nuke restart

Maybe the ASLB was referring to some other NRC that should hold public
hearings?


The Atomic Safety and Licensing Board (ASLB) agreed with Friends
of the Earth (FOE) when it ruled that
restarting either San Onofre unit requires a full public hearing
like a trial, but the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) interprets
that as having nothing to do with its own staff decision process.
This is after the city of Los Angeles (and numerous other
southern California cities and the San Diego Unified School District)

said it didn’t want any
decision about restarting any San Onofre reactor/ without a full,
transparent, public decision process.
The L.A. Times says all this is creating “confusion”.
Just last week I heard Georgia Power CEO Paul Bowers say confusion
was bad for business.
Maybe it will be bad not just for Southern California Edison and its
San Onofre nukes, but also for Georgia Power and Southern Company’s

19-month-late and billion-over-budget nuclear boondoggle at Plant Vogtle.

Abby Sewell wrote for the L.A. Times yesterday 7:24 PM,

San Onofre ruling creates confusion,

Continue reading →

Solar Baxley City Hall



Baxley City Hall has solar panels, in Appling County, home to nuclear Plant Hatch.
Why?
The solar installation will
generate most during the most expensive electrical power times of the day;
it will pay for itself in ten years,
and it’s lower power bills from then on.
Baxley City Council approved the project unanimously in December,
to be paid for out of reserves with no financing,
and the solar system is already installed and working.
Any local city or county hereabouts could do the same thing.

Renee O’Quinn wrote for the Baxley News-Banner 19 December 2012,

City approves installation of solar panels at City Hall,

Continue reading →

Highest paid public employee in Georgia?

Come on, guess!
You’re right:

it’s a football coach.
UGA football coaching staff get even more compensation than Paul Bowers, CEO of Georgia Power,
or Thomas A. Fanning, CEO of the Southern Company, let alone any
insignificant college president or elected official.


If I’m reading

the ESPN database right,
UGA coaches get around $14 million a year,
while Georgia Power CEO Paul Bowers gets only Continue reading →

Internet access lunacy maybe partly corrected by Google Fiber

Slower and more expensive than the rest of the world: U.S. Internet access
doesn’t have to be that way.
Bob knows about our Internet issues here and is interested in helping.



Chunka Mul wrote for Forbes 26 April 2013,

The Lunacy of Our Internet Access, and How Google Fiber Could Provide Needed Shock Therapy,

Imagine you are the world’s largest operator of shopping malls, and
shoppers can only get to your malls via the equivalent of dirt paths
and country roads. What’s more, those meager routes are all
controlled by an oligopoly of private, toll-road operators that
focus on their profitability, not on getting consumers to the stores
in your malls.

The result would be a mess. The roads would be slow yet expensive.
Consumers would limit shopping trips. The stores in your malls would
have a hard time generating business, so your malls would languish.

Yet the entire online economy runs on an analogous network. The
network could easily be lightning fast, pervasive and cheap (or even
free). Instead,

Continue reading →

Valdosta Utilities Department 5-Year Action Plan

Received 26 April 2013. Basically Valdosta is accelerating its
plans to do something about wastewater, including adding pumpstations
and force mains, as well as
relocating the Withlacoochee Wastewater Treatment Plant uphill.
Here are the summary pages; there’s much more detail in

the plan. -jsq




Utilities Department 5-Year Action Plan:

Since 1992, the City has received $179 million in SPLOST funding and
over the same time period has invested nearly $168 million in
capital projects for the Water and Wastewater system. This includes
SPLOST funding, system revenues, bonds, and GEFA loans.

Since 2009, the Utilities Department has expended over $49 million
on sewer system improvement with approximately $5.6 million spent on
the Withlacoochee Treatment Plant. When the projects listed below
are completed by December 2018, the City will have invested
approximately $230 million in capital projects for its Utilities
system from 1992 to 2018, a 26-year period.

PUMP STATION, FORCE MAIN, HEADWORKS AND EQUALIZATION BASIN PROJECT

Continue reading →