Tag Archives: PPA

Southern Company and Duke backing solar Florida

Are all the fracking utitilies finally seeing the sunlight?


By Backing solar power
in Florida, are Duke, Southern Company, TECO, and even FPL’s parent NextEra
hedging their bets, or finally realizing where the future is?

Reem Nasr, CNBC, 12 June 2015,

The sleeping giant of the solar industry: Florida,

Duke Energy Florida told CNBC that it “is a strong supporter of
solar energy and we are committed to helping to grow solar in
Florida.” Last month it announced an additional 500 megawatts of
solar facilities by 2024, among other solar projects.

Meanwhile in May Duke Energy of Charlotte, North Carolina
bought 7.5% of Sabal Trail, along with Spectra Energy of Houston
and NextEra Energy of Juno Beach, Florida.

Southern Co., which owns Florida’s Gulf Power, said the following:

Continue reading →

Georgia Power starts selling rooftop solar tomorrow

For most of June, Georgia Power has had two ads rotating on the

300x225 Sunlight from Georgia Power, in Giving you the power to go solar, by Gretchen Quarterman, 10 June 2015
five LED billboards in Valdosta, saying

Giving you the power to go solar —Georgia Power

When? Tomorrow, July 1st, as

Southern Company CEO Tom Fanning said
at the SO Stockholder meeting 27 May 2015.
Why then?
Because that’s when

HB 57, aka the Solar Power Free-Market Financing Act of 2015,

goes into effect.
As Tom Fanning has made his mantra since that meeting:

“If somebody wants to buy distributed generation, I want to sell it to ’em,”

Herman K. Trabish, Utility Dive, 11 June 2015

Inside Georgia Power’s move into the residential solar market:
The utility says it will offer solar through an unregulated business, but installers fear possible anticompetitive impacts, Continue reading →

Southern Company Annual Stockholder Meeting @ SO 2015-05-27


Solar power made much of SO’s increased energy revenues for 2013 and 2014.
What else will we learn at the Southern Company 2015 Annual Meeting of Shareholders,
Wednesday, May 27, 2015?
Has Southern Company finally looked up, and will it say, like

Thomas Alva Edison in 1931,
“I’d put my money on the sun and solar energy”?

To attend the SO shareholder meeting you have to have owned stock by
Monday, March 30, 2015, or you’ll need to get somebody to appoint you their proxy.
Since I’m an SO stockholder, I got the
216-page Southern Company Notice of 2015 Annual Meeting of Stockholders, Proxy Statement and 2014 Annual Report, page D-8:

In 2014, wholesale revenues increased $329 million, or 17.7%, as
compared to the prior year due to a $326 million increase in energy
revenues and a $3 million increase in capacity revenues. The
increase in energy revenues was primarily related to increased
revenue under existing contracts as well as new solar PPAs and
requirements contracts primarily at Southern Power, Continue reading →

Solar financing bill HB 57

You won’t have to mortgage the farm to install solar power if this bill passes,


because you’ll be able to get

reasonable financing.

Update 2015-02-07: HB 57 was favorably reported out of the
House Energy, Utilities & Telecommunications Committee 28 January 2015,
first time such a bill has ever cleared that hurdle.

The actual solar leasing bill in the Georgia House as of 14 January 2015
is

HB 57 “…to provide for financing of solar technology by retail electric customers for the generation of electric energy to be used on and by property owned or occupied by such customers or to be fed back to the electric service provider”, aka the “Solar Power Free-Market Financing Act of 2015.”
It includes the same old generation limits from the 1973 Territorial
Electric Service Act (10 Megawatts per individual and 100 MW per company),
but it blows a huge hole in the prohibition on power purchase agreements (PPAs).

Georgia Power and the Electric Membership Corporations have reportedly

already agreed on this bill.
If so, it should sail through the legislature.
Still, it won’t hurt to call your Georgia House member and ask them to vote for it,
and maybe become a co-sponsor.

Here’s PDF
of the bill, and
here’s the key provision: Continue reading →

NYC Schools to use more solar power; how about in sunny southeast?

Solar high schools: not just for

Dublin, Georgia anymore.

New York City, and Rochester, NY, too!
How about solar Lowndes High School?
Or the new Valdosta High School?
Or since Valdosta has already
put solar at its Mud Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant,
how about on other city buildings?
How about on the county palace?
Or in Hahira, Dasher, Remerton, or Lake Park?

Erin Durkin wrote for New York Daily News 29 September 2014,

24 NYC schools getting solar panels in $28M project — and City Hall could be next, Continue reading →

Solar is now competitive with … natural gas –Crossborder Energy study

Colorado, California, North Carolina: when will Georgia catch up in solar power?
What will it take to get the Georgia legislature to realize all Georgians
will benefit economically from much more solar power than

GA PSC in July required Georgia Power to buy?
And why should we permit

a methane gas pipeline to gash through Georgia
to profit executives in Houston and Juno Beach, Florida
when we could be deploying solar everywhere in Georgia
for

local jobs, profit, lower electric bills, and clean air and water?

Here’s
the study
that showed solar benefits outweigh costs in North Carolina,

The Benefits and Costs
of Solar Generation
for Electric Ratepayers
in North Carolina,
by R. Thomas Beach and
Patrick G. McGuire for Crossborder Energy, 18 October 2013.

Wholesale solar PPA prices provide perhaps the most dramatic
evidence of the continued decline in solar PV costs. Solar PPA
prices have fallen dramatically over the past several years, to the
point that, in some regions of the U.S., solar is now competitive
with other generation resources, including wind and natural gas.
Xcel Energy in Colorado recently announced that it is proposing to
add 170 MW of utility-scale solar to its system, with its CEO
stating “[f]or the first time ever, we are adding cost
competitive utility scale solar to the system.”33
The
California electric utilities make public each year the average PPA
prices for renewable contracts approved by the CPUC in the prior
year. Figure 3 shows the trend in the prices for their solar PV
PPAs; CPUC contract approval can occur up to a year or more after
bids are received, so the figure is indicative of prices through
roughly 2011.34
2012 solicitations for solar PPAs in California in
the 3 MW to 20 MW size range through the Renewable Auction Mechanism
(RAM) have yielded market-clearing prices in the
8 to 9 cents
per
kWh range.3


The Lawrence Berkeley National Lab (LBNL) conducts and publishes
regular national surveys of the installed costs of solar PV; these
surveys include Continue reading →

Sun dancing as a Georgia Trend

GSEA, GaSU, Georgia Power, and even me are quoted in a Georgia
Trend feature about solar power in Georgia.
As Mahatma Gandhi is alleged to have said when asked his opinion
of western civilization: “that would be a good idea!”

Jerry Grillo wrote for Georgia Trend July 2013,

Sun Dancing:
As Georgia’s solar capacity shoots skyward, a new state utility is proposed,



It’s the sun, the sol of our solar system, to which everything that
lives and moves, including the wind, owes its existence. Without the
sun, there is no us, no Earth. You can’t miss it. It’s the biggest
thing in the sky, the biggest thing for at least 24 trillion miles,
and at 4.5 billion years old it is middle-aged and remains the most
abundant source of power between here and Alpha Centauri, zapping
our planet every minute with more energy than humanity can consume
in a year.

The best thing is, the sun is free. Still, for most of those eons,
capturing the sun’s energy for human consumption has been like
picking crops with a catcher’s mitt.

But over the past few years, photovoltaic technology
(“photo” for light, “voltaic” meaning
electricity) has gotten way more efficient, and the previously
prohibitive price has fallen dramatically, setting the stage for
what’s happening now in Georgia: Solar deployment and interest are
increasing dramatically.

“This is a very dynamic time for solar energy, and it
demonstrates a pent-up demand and interest in solar energy for
Georgia,” says Mark Bell, chair of the Georgia Solar Energy
Association (GSEA) and president of Atlanta-based Empower Energy
Tech-nology. “There’s a great potential here for real,
sustainable economic development.”



Grillo was pretty thorough in getting a range of points of view
(with the notable exception of

Georgia Sierra Club),
and

the whole article
is well worth reading.

Among the things I told Grillo back at the beginning of May,
I’m especially glad he included this:

Continue reading →

Industrial Authority working for solar in south Georgia @ VLCIA 2012-12-18

The

Industrial Authority
is working to find locations for some of the
210 MW Georgia Power got the PSC to shift
from biomass to solar back in September.
That’s a good next step.

Jason Schaefer wrote for the VDT 23 Dec 2012,

Solar power push has Authority working to establish connections,

Since the Georgia Public Service Commission (PSC) approved Georgia

Allan Ricketts, Projects and Existing Industry Manager, VLCIA, 2012-12-18
Power Company’s plan Nov. 20 to add 210 megawatts of solar power to
its electrical grid, the Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial
Authority has been devising strategies to draw solar energy
producers to South Georgia.

Georgia Power will issue a Request for Proposals (RFP) from solar
energy collection and production companies in early 2013, according
to the PSC, and the company will contract with the lowest bidders to
purchase their energy and place it on the Georgia Power electrical
grid for public consumption.

Georgia Power plans to add 90 megawatts to its grid from distributed
generation (small companies producing between 100 kilowatts and 1
megawatt), and 120 megawatts of large utility-scale projects
producing up to 20 megawatts each. The company plans to price the
solar energy at $0.13 per kWh for distributed generation and up to
$0.12 per kWh for utility-scale projects, according to the PSC.

This government-approved commercial push for solar energy could be a
boon to sunny South Georgia as well as the greater Valdosta area
specifically, and the Authority is prepared to accommodate the solar
energy producers they expect.


Andrew Schruijer, Executive Director, VLCIA, 2012-12-18
“I think there’s a very good possibility of solar energy
coming to South Georgia,” Executive Director Andrea Schruijer
said. “Possibly in the near future.”

There’s more in the VDT story.
It’s pretty much what
Col. Ricketts also told me after the VLCIA meeting Tuesday a week ago.
He asked me if I knew what “distributed” meant.
I pointed out Georgia Power’s version of distributed was actually not
very distributed, compared to

Continue reading →

VLCIA to sue Sterling Power about biomass site?

I’d heard a rumor that some sort of lawsuit about the biomass site
was the subject of some of the Industrial Authority executive
sessions for real estate discussions.
VLCIA has finally said in public what their position is.

Jason Schaefer wrote for the VDT today,

Authority weighs suit for biomass land:
Slow progress leads to default, contract argument



The Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority plans to send a
petition to Lowndes County Superior Court to sue Wiregrass Power,
LLC, for a clear title on the land purchased for the development of
a biomass energy plant.

The Authority believes Wiregrass defaulted on a lease agreement to
build the plant, placing ownership of the 22.22-acre tract back in
their hands, but Wiregrass denies the allegations. This denial casts
“a cloud” of suspicion on the Authority that may prevent
it from re-marketing the property, according to the petition,
leading to the suit.

Sounds like they’re publicizing their intent
to try to scare Sterling off without having to sue.
I’m for that.

This may explain

a flurry of special called meetings they had in May and June 2011.

Continue reading →

SB 401 revived in SB 459: lets you generate and sell solar power

SB 401 got tabled in the Natural Resources Committee.
46 other states already let people generate solar power and sell it to
a third party.

Yet in only four states — Georgia, Florida, North Carolina and
Kentucky Mdash; are third party power purchase agreements disallowed,
according to the U.S. Department of Energy.

But Georgia Power convinced that committee that it would raise
rates for everybody else.
Which is pretty rich coming from the same gapower that is

already charging customers Construction Work in Progress
for its nuke boondoggle.
So SB 401 sponsor Sen. Buddy Carter found another way.

Mary Landers wrote for the Savannah Morning News Friday,

Solar bill jolted back to life:

To revive his bill, Carter tacked it onto to one already sent to the


Regulated Industries Committee — SB 459, which would allow
consumers to opt-out of smart meters like the ones Georgia Power is
currently installing in Savannah. The committee held a hearing on
the bill Thursday, ultimately tabling it, and saying they wanted
more information about how power purchase agreements work in other
states.

Carter was elated.

“It’s out there now and people are aware of it,” he
said. It’s getting media attention. I feel good about it.”

Help him feel even better about it.
Contact the committee chair and tell him we want solar cogeneration:

Senator William Ligon

404-656-0045

william.ligon@senate.ga.gov

Oh, regarding the meter opt-out in the main body of the bill,
why let gapower charge people for that?
You can mention to Sen. Ligon that people should be able to opt out for free.

-jsq

PS: Owed to Bob Ingram.