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<\/a>\nToday is a historic day, when even a governor
\nwho took campaign finance funds from
\na long list of fossil fuel pipeline companies<\/a>,
\nthe governor of the most corrupt state
\n(least stringent ethics laws)<\/a>,
\nwhen that governor
\nfinally signed a law that even the
\nmost corruption-prone legislature<\/a>,
\nafter squelching similar bills for a dozen years<\/a>,
\nfinally passed as HB 57 unanimously in both houses<\/a>.<\/p>\n
\nDave Williams, Atlanta Business Chronicle, 12 may 2015, \nGeorgia property owners will get more affordable options for \nThe legislation, which sailed through the General Assembly \nAlready two years ago the Georgia Public Service Commissioners, \nLuis Martinez, NRDC, 12 May 2015, \nAnyone who’s ever sat out on a Georgia afternoon or wandered \nThere’s a lot more in his post.<\/p>\n \nThe picture Martinez includes is captioned: “Photo by John S. Quarterman”, \nSolar power
\n
\nGov. Deal signs bill letting solar installers offer customers third-party financing<\/a>,<\/p>\n\n
\ninstalling solar panels at their homes and businesses under a bill
\nGov. Nathan Deal signed into law Tuesday.\n<\/p>\n
\nunanimously, will let solar installers offer customers third-party
\nfinancing of installations. That’s a major change from the old law,
\nwhich required customers to pay up front.\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
\neven though overwhelmingly campaign-funded by the industries they regulate,
\n
\nrequired Georgia Power to buy twice as much solar energy as it wanted<\/a>.
\nThis year Georgia Power’s parent Southern Company’s annual report says
\nits main source of new revenue for both 2013 and 2014 was solar power.
\nAnd Georgia has already leaped from far behind to become the fastest
\ngrowing solar market in the nation,
\nwith numerous Georgia Power solar utility-scale installations
\nand smaller ones like
\nfor Alton Burns in Thomas County<\/a>
\nand
\ntoday for George Bennett in Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia<\/a>.
\nThis new law Gov. Deal just signed will accelerate that growth even more.<\/p>\n
\nThe Sun Also Rises in the Southeast<\/a>,<\/p>\n\n
\noutdoors in the bright Florida sunshine, knows the solar power
\npotential in these two Southeastern states is enormous. Now, after a
\nslow start, so is the headway the clean power technology is making
\nin the Southeast’s two most populous states. “In 2011, if you told
\nme we’d be where we are today with solar,” says one Georgia solar
\nadvocate, “I would have laughed.”\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
\nbut that’s not me in that quote above.
\nAfter installing the first 21st century solar panels in Lowndes County in 2009<\/a>,
\nI have<\/em> been saying this stuff since 2011,
\nadvocating before the Lowndes County Commission<\/a>,
\nasking the Valdosta City Council
\n
\nwhen it would expand<\/a> its
\n
\nsmall solar array at the Mud Creek Wastwater plant<\/a>.
\nThe answer turned out to be in 2013, and those two solar projects
\nhelped Valdosta win
\nSmart Energy Municipality of the Year<\/a> for 2014.
\nWay back in 2010 Arizona State University said
\n
\nGeorgia was the #3 state with most to benefit from solar power<\/a>.
\nAdd to that solar prices continually dropping due to economies of scale
\nand driving deployments up, in
\n
\nMoore’s Law for solar<\/a> (aka Swanson’s Law),
\nand it’s not hard to make the predictions both I and former FERC Chair
\nJon Wellinghoff made in 2013 that within a decade more U.S. electricity
\nwould come from solar power than from any other source;
\npredictions that
\nbeing borne out by actual solar deployment more than doubling every two years<\/a>.
\nAdd to that electric vehicles and
\nhome batteries<\/a>,
\nand pretty soon, like the horse-and-buggy days a century ago,
\nthe era of fossil fuels will be over.<\/p>\n
\n
\nwill win like the Internet did<\/a>, like personal computers, like mobile phones,
\nand for many of the same reasons.<\/p>\n