Tag Archives: Planning

NJ 1 GW Solar: GA #22

While Georgia

failed to reform its antique Territorial Electric Service Act
and

toyed with a solar monopoly,


New Jersey, far to the north with far less sun,
finished installing a gigawatt (1,000 megawatts) of solar power.
The rest of the

U.S. installed 3.3 MW total, slightly higher
than projections of 3.2 MW, but Georgia lagged behind.
When will the legislature and the Public Service Commission,
and perhaps more importantly, Georgia Power and Southern Company,
stop

stop wasting our money on that three-legged nuclear regulatory-capture boondoggle
at Plant Vogtle
and get on with solar in Georgia for jobs, for profit, and for clean air and water?

Pete Danko wrote for

Earth Techling and Huffpo 20 March 2013,

New Jersey Solar Capacity Hits 1 Gigawatt,

Continue reading →

U.S. installed 3.3 Gigawatts of solar in 2012, on target

Moore’s law continues to drive solar costs down and installations up.
According to SEIA,

U.S. Market Installs 3,300 Megawatts in 2012; Driven by Record Fourth Quarter,

2012 was a historic year for the U.S. solar industry. There were
3,313 megawatts (MW) of photovoltaic (PV) capacity installed
throughout the year, which represents 76% growth over 2011’s record
deployment totals. The fourth quarter of 2012 was also the largest
quarter on record as 1,300 MW came online, driven in part by
unprecedented installation levels in the residential and utility
markets. SEIA and GTM Research forecast that the market will
continue to grow at a steady clip with over 4,200 MW of PV and 940
MW of concentrating solar power (CSP) expected to come online in
2013. (All data from SEIA/GTM Research “U.S. Solar Market
Insight 2012 Year-In-Review” unless otherwise noted.)


And those new installations are driven by solar PV prices continually falling in

Moore’s Law for solar:

Continue reading →

Valdosta PR about wastewater issues

The city of Valdosta responds. I have decorated this PR with a few
images with links, and a few comments after it. -jsq


Mayor and Council Address Recent Wastewater Issues,

The Valdosta Mayor and City Council are committed to providing quality
municipal services that meet the expectations of our citizens. In addition
to providing fire and police protection and other beneficial quality of
life services, the city leadership is equally committed to providing
adequate water and wastewater treatment services to its citizens,
maintaining a functioning sewer collection system and discharging treated
water in an environmentally responsible manner.



Recently, citizens have been inundated with information about
the current state of the city’s wastewater treatment plant and sewer
collection system, as well as the decisions made during the recent flood
event. The following information is provided to explain the recent event
and to help citizens better understand these important issues and the
dedicated work of their elected officials and municipal staff.

THE SITUATION

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Prison gang violence

This is what eventually happens in

a country with 5% of the world’s population yet 25% of the world’s
prisoners,
in a state that has
1 in 13 adults in the prison system (jail, prison, probation, or parole): prison violence the prisons can’t deal with,
possibly including

the mysterious violence at Valdosta State Prison.
When we stop locking up so many people by ending the war on drugs,
we’ll have plenty of money to adequately secure the few remaining
real violent offenders.

Rhonda Cook wrote for the AJC Saturday,

Gang violence in prison is increasingly deadly,


In a little more than 10 months, 12 inmates and a guard have been
stabbed to death in Georgia prisons, a dramatic uptick in violence
that law enforcement officials and human rights advocates agree
points to increased gang activity.

“We cannot remember a time like this when we were getting this
volume and severity of violence,” said Sara Totonchi,
executive director of the Southern Center for Human Rights, which
monitors prison violence.

People who go into such prisons, if they aren’t already violent,
are likely to be taught to be violent, and some just don’t come back out.
Yet those that do get out can be bad for the rest of us:

Continue reading →

Spilling Sewage Pictures by Gabe Fisher 3:30 PM 24 March 2013

Received yesterday. -jsq

Date: Sun, 24 Mar 2013 15:43:47 -0400


Manhole

All, just so everyone is on the same page- the sewer line is currently
spilling sewage. It just started at mu house but has been going strong
at sugar creek for awhile by the looks of it. Here are some current
pictures as of 3:30 today. It will get worse until the river crests..

Gabe

Continue reading →

HB 657, the Rural Georgia Economic Recovery and Solar Resource Act of 2014

The solar bill that’s been talked about for weeks has finally appeared in the
Georgia legislature:

HB 657.
It’s better than I expected, because it’s about rural solar generation and distribution.
However, there is a catch: a “community solar provider” must be certified
by the Public Service Commission, instead of just setting up in business
as in most states, and the PSC could certify only one state-wide monopoly;
note the summary at the front says “an independent community solar
provider” as in only one.
But the body of the bill is more circumspect and says “any”.
Perhaps if we get enough installations
the benefits of solar will become obvious enough that
the PSC will certify a lot of community solar providers,
and we can get on with solar in Georgia,
including house and business rooftop solar.
Many thanks to Representatives Kidd of the 145th, Kirby of the 114th, Rogers of the 10th, Brockway of
the 102nd, Fullerton of the 153rd, and others.
And special credit to Robert E. Green, Shane Owl-Greason, and Ted Terry
of Georgia Solar Utilities (GaSU) for shepherding this bill
into the legislature.


Shane Owl-Greason, Ted Terry, Robert E. Green

Shane Owl-Greason, Ted Terry, Robert E. Green
at the

Dublin High School solar groundbreaking.

The bill requires the PSC to study changes in retail
rates because of this bill.
Too bad it doesn’t go the rest of the way to

what North Carolina did,
and require timely public posting of who buys and sells which types
of energy at which prices, but at least it’s a start.

Maybe HB 657 will help get

HB 503 passed for Renewable Portfolio Standards.
However, HB 657 is cleaner than either HB 503 or SB 51 because it does not mess around
with biomass or for that matter any other energy source:
HB 657 is about solar energy and nothing else.

The main part of HB 657 is in Section 1, but first here’s how it
shoehorns

Continue reading →

Apple: from 35% to 75% renewable energy in two years



All it takes is the will to get it done, and Apple is doing it:

from 35% renewable energy in 2010 to 75% in 2012, and 100%
at all Apple data centers.
Cost? They’ll save more than they spent.
Time for Georgia Power and Southern Company to stop dragging their feet
and help us get on with it in Georgia.

Peter Burrows wrote for Bloomberg Thursday that

Apple got nudged:

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Harris resignation letter —Gretchen Quarterman



Some thoughts on the

Kay Harris resignation letter.

  1. If the library building is going to fall down, move the
    library to another available building like the soon to be
    closed federal building downtown.
  2. Has she forgotten that the newspaper brags that SPLOST is paid
    half by people who don't even live in the county?
  3. If Valdosta had gone ahead with the MOST then for sure
    county residents would have been paying for something
    that they wouldn't get to use. How much "shopping" is outside
    the Valdosta city limits? Harvey's in Bemiss, Harvey's in
    Hahira and the stores in Lake Park.

Certainly a SPLOST is better than a MOST.

-gretchen

Renewable Portfolio Standards: GA, NC, and ALEC

Renewable Energy Portfolio Standards (RPS) are being proposed
in Georgia and ALEC is trying to do away with them in North Carolina.
If ALEC doesn’t like them, there must be something good about RPS.
Let’s get on with real renewable energy in Georgia.



In Georgia,

HB 503,
sponsored by Karla Drenner, Carol Fullerton, Debbie Buckner, Scott
Holcomb, Spencer Frye, and Earnest Smith,
would create a Renewable Energy Credits Trading program as part of
renewable portfolio standards,
as Kyle wrote for Spencer Frye’s blog 10 March 2013,

Let the Sunshine In.
Unfortunately, HB 503 includes biomass as a renewable energy source.
Maybe they just mean landfill gas, which I consider a special case
since it’s being produced anyway, and since methane is worse as
a greenhouse gas than CO2, burning landfill gas makes some sense.
Nope, in

the actual bill, 46-3-71 (1):

‘Biomass material’ means organic matter, excluding fossil fuels and black liquor,
including agricultural crops, plants, trees, wood, wood wastes and residues, sawmill
waste, sawdust, wood chips, bark chips, and forest thinning, harvesting, or clearing
residues; wood waste from pallets or other wood demolition debris; peanut shells; cotton
plants; corn stalks; and plant matter, including aquatic plants, grasses, stalks, vegetation,
and residues, including hulls, shells, or cellulose containing fibers

The barn door in there is “harvesting”, which can mean whole trees,
but the rest isn’t much better.
We don’t need to be burning things that increase atmospheric CO2
and end up stripping our forests.
In

North Carolina they staretd with just tops and limbs and then tried to escalate
to whole trees.
We already
fought off the biomass boondoggle here in south Georgia;
let’s not have it encouraged statewide.
Especially when we have better solutions: solar and wind power.
HB 503 isn’t going to get passed this year, since it didn’t make
crossover day, so maybe its sponsors can clean up that biomass mess
before they submit it again.

Speaking of North Carolina,

Continue reading →

Kay Harris resigned as Chair and from Library Board

Received today:
PDF, with transcription appended below. -jsq


Kay Harris talking about SPLOST VII
March 15, 2013

Joe Pritchard
County Manager
Lowndes County
327 N. Ashley St.
Valdosta, GA 31601

Dear Mr. Pritchard:

It is with great regret that I find the need to step down from the Lowndes County
and South Georgia Regional Library Board of Trustees. I fear that I am no longer
capable of holding this position in light of the county’s recent actions.

As you are aware,

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