Power generation for both traditional electricity uses and transportation
is changing.
Michael Liedtke and Jonathan Fahey wrote for AP and Inc. 1 May 2015, Elon Musk Unveils Tesla’s Ambitious New Home Battery System: “Our goal here is to fundamentally change the way the world uses energy,” Musk told reporters gathered in Hawthorne, California.
The batteries are likely to become more useful if, as expected, more utilities and regulators allow Continue reading
People are starting to wake up as the solar sun rises above their horizon. This could be the year the Georgia legislature finally passes a bill to amend the law that inhibits solar financing. Even the City of Valdosta seems suddenly interested in helping with that.
Michael Caputo and Grant Blankenship, GPB, 12 December 2014, (VIDEO) Will Solar Power’s Surge in Georgia Make It To Homeowners?,
Early adopter Creighton Rosental of Macon is what you’d call a solar pioneer. The early adopter said that he had the 4-kilowatt panels installed on the backyard side of his roof about five years ago. Two-thirds of the upfront cost—about $30,000—was covered by a federal tax credit and a Georgia state credit.
“They built a frame and mounted it to the roof, which was a substantial fairly substantial enterprise.” Rosental said.
Continue reading
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:
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Groundbreaking for solar power to save Dublin High 40%,
thus reducing teacher furloughs,
financed by municipal bonds,
made possible by cooperation among a wide range of
government officials, private companies, and individuals:
that was the groundbreaking story in Dublin, Laurens County, yesterday,
videod by Gretchen Quarterman for LAKE.
Dublin City Schools are willing to try something new, and that’s why
they were groundbreaking,
said Chuck Ledbetter, Superintendent, yesterday.
He
recognized members present of the Dublin City Council, the
Laurens County Commission, the Dublin-Laurens Development Authority,
and state representative Matt Hatchett, and
Public Service Commissioner Bubba McDonald.
Ledbetter’s theme,
Everybody worked together to make this happen.
was echoed over and over by many other speakers. What they worked for was economic help for Dublin City Schools through solar power, financed by municipal bonds.
The Mayor of Dublin, Phil Best added to the list Continue reading
Dublin gets the jump on the rest of Georgia again:
Dublin High School will get a megawatt of solar electricity
through a lease agreement with a private company
using local government bonds to get around Georgia’s special financing problem.
Kenny Burgamy reported for for 13wmaz.com Thursday, Solar Plant To Be Located at Dublin High,
Dublin High School of Dublin City Schools will soon implement 1 megawatt of solar energy.
The 4,000 panel solar power plant will be the largest in Central Georgia and is expected to save the school 40 percent in energy costs.
Dublin City Schools Superintendent Chuck Ledbetter told 13WMAZ, “The facility will be built and owned by private business and the school system will lease the solar power plant, saving us money in energy costs.”
The original plan was developed more than 15-months ago by German based MAGE SOLAR, which has a plant located in Laurens County.
The story has been carried by GPB by Athens Banner-Herald via AP.
This installation is similar to but slightly different from Continue reading
Here are videos of Saturday’s
Solar Energy Forum
at the
Center for a Sustainable Coast (CSC)
in Savannah,
with
introductions by
Steve Willis, CSC Board President,
and
David Kyler, CSC Executive Director,
presentations by
Paul Wolff
of the
City of Tybee Island
about energy independence through renewable energy (including much new information
since
his February appearance on this blog),
about how they
incorporated in June out of frustration at
Georgia Power and Southern Company stonewalling on solar energy,
the
GaSU filings with the
Georgia Public Service Commission
that got the PSC
to recommend GaSU go to the legislature
to interpret or amend the
1973 Territorial Electric Service Act,
and much information about
the financial projections that underlie
GaSU’s business plan,
We will probably post more later on the presentations by Paul Wolff and Robert Green, and the ensuing questions and answers. Meanwhile, here’s a video playlist of the entire event:
Videos, Solar Energy Forum
Solar Energy Forum, Center for a Sustainable Coast (CSC),
Videos by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE),
Savannah, Chatham County, Georgia, 1 December 2012.
-jsq
GA PSC Stan Wise’s 2009 nuclear CWIP lobbying points eerily matched Southern Company’s, but suddenly he’s got separation-of-powers religion about Georgia Solar Utilities (GaSU). The PSC recommended GaSU’s utility bid anyway. When the legislature takes that up in a month or so, will GaSU CEO Robert Green, unlike SO or Georgia Power or Stan Wise, help the rest of us little people fix the 1973 Territoriality law so we can sell our solar electricity on a free market?
Dave Williams wrote for the Atlanta Business Chronicle yesterday, Georgia Public Service Commission moves ahead on solar energy,
The Georgia Public Service Commission approved a plan by Georgia Power Co. Tuesday to acquire an additional 210 megawatts of solar generating capacity, more than tripling its investment in solar energy.
But a sharply divided PSC also gave a potential competitor to Georgia Power its blessing to appeal to the General Assembly to amend a 39-year-old law that gives the Atlanta-based utility the exclusive right to continue serving existing customers.
Under Georgia Power’s Advanced Solar Initiative, the company will buy solar power produced by both large “utility-scale” solar farms and from smaller projects operated by residential and commercial property owners.
Right, that’s actually only 10 Megawatts from “smaller projects”, maintaining Georgia Power’s monopoly while throwing throwing a bone to the rest of us.
While the PSC supported Georgia Power’s plan unanimously, a subsequent motion by McDonald encouraging other solar utilities interested in serving Georgia to pursue their plans with the legislature passed by the narrow margin of 3-2.
Georgia Solar Utilities Inc., a company launched in Macon, Ga., earlier this year, filed an application with the PSC in September for authority to generate solar energy in Georgia on a utility scale.
The two Nay votes were from the two recently-reelected PSC members, apparently now thoroughly in the pocket of the incumbent utilities. Here’s one of them now:
Continue reading