{"id":13277,"date":"2015-06-11T06:16:17","date_gmt":"2015-06-11T10:16:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/?p=13277"},"modified":"2015-06-11T06:22:42","modified_gmt":"2015-06-11T10:22:42","slug":"most-of-june-electric-bill-for-overbudget-nuke-yet-the-sun-rises","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2015\/06\/most-of-june-electric-bill-for-overbudget-nuke-yet-the-sun-rises.html","title":{"rendered":"Most of June electric bill for overbudget nuke, yet the sun rises"},"content":{"rendered":"

\r\nWhile electric bills still are tilted against local solar generation\r\n\r\n\"300x225<\/a>\r\nand Georgia Power continues to levy its stealth CWIP tax for its\r\nnuke boondoggle, yet solar power is rising this year on\r\nSouthern Company and Georgia Power.\r\n

\r\nBret Wagenhorst posted on facebook 9 June 2015:\r\n

\r\n

\r\nI find it decidedly ironic that a large portion of my last month\r\nelectric bill went toward paying for a nuclear power plant that is\r\nhundreds of millions of dollars over budget, and which will no doubt\r\ncost millions of dollars a year to run and to manage its potentially\r\ndeadly waste. I wonder if the money spent on the nuclear plant were\r\nused to purchase rooftop solar panels for all certified energy\r\nefficient Georgian homes if we citizens might not be better off in\r\nthe long run. Thoughts?\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nLook for\r\n\r\nNuclear Construction Cost Recovery Rider<\/a> on that bill:\r\n\r\n\r\nit’s $1.34.\r\n

\r\n\r\n\"600x450<\/a>\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nHere’s\r\n\r\nwho voted for<\/a>\r\n2009’s\r\n\r\nSB 31, “Energy Rate Increases to Finance Nuclear Power Plant Construction”<\/a>\r\nthat established that infamous Construction Work in Progress (CWIP) charge.\r\nAnd it’s not just CWIP: it’s super-CWIP!\r\nIt automatically increases year after year.\r\n

\r\nGeorgia Power for two years\r\n\r\ncouldn’t get a schedule from its own contractors<\/a>\r\nat Plant Vogtle,\r\nleading even usually pro-nuke Georgia Public Commissioner H. Doug Everett\r\n(Commissioner for south Georgia) to remark:\r\n

\r\n

\r\nWe haven’t seen any results. \r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nEverett also called the lack of a schedule “imprudent”.\r\n

\r\nLet’s not forget that the existing Plant Vogtle units 1 and 2\r\n\r\nleak radioactive tritium<\/a> into the Savannah River\r\nand sometimes catches fire<\/a>,\r\nwhile\r\nSouthern Nuclear’s Plants Hatch on the Altamaha<\/a>\r\nand Farley on the \r\nChattahoochee also leak tritium and have\r\nchronic fire safety problems<\/a>.\r\nWhat else may be faulty at all those plants is not clear,\r\nconsidering some of their parts come from\r\n\r\nthe document-forging Korean nuclear mafia<\/a>.\r\n

\r\nEventually even Georgia Power and Southern Company may admit\r\nthat new nukes \r\nmake no financial sense<\/a>,\r\nnot to mention\r\n\r\nsucking up more water than the city of Savannah<\/a>\r\nand remaining hazardous for many generations.\r\nThen maybe we can shut them down along with the coal plants\r\nGeorgia Power already is shutting down.\r\nBeware that\r\n\r\nGeorgia Power can charge ratepayers even if it’s cancelled<\/a>,\r\nlike\r\n\r\nDuke is doing with Progress Energy’s closed Crystal River nuke in Florida<\/a>.\r\n

\r\nUnlike\r\n\r\nDuke’s recommendation<\/a>,\r\nlet’s not shift to no-better fracked methane pipelines;\r\nwe can\r\n\r\ngo straight to clean, renewable sun, wind, and water power<\/a>.\r\n

\r\nDr. Wagenhorst’s bill also includes\r\n

\r\n

\r\nDistributed Generation Meter Charge: $2.82\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nYep, Georgia Power is charging for a solar meter.\r\nIt could have been worse.\r\nGeorgia Power wanted to impose a $60\/month solar connection fee\r\nlike Dominion Power got away with in Virginia.\r\nFortunately, Georgia Sierra Club and others organized\r\n\r\na groundswell of opposition<\/a>\r\nand that fee never even got proposed to GA PSC.\r\n

\r\nBut Bret remarks:\r\n

\r\n

\r\nIf you look closely at the bill, you can also see that I generate\r\nabout seven times as much electricity as I use. Unfortunately, the\r\npower company doesn’t pay\/credit me the same per kW hr as I pay\r\nthem. I realize that they have a lot of infrastructure investment,\r\nbut I wonder if they appreciate what my costs were for the\r\ninfrastructure (i.e. solar panels) to generate kW hrs. for them.\r\nHmmm……,\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nI’m not sure what Georgia Power’s rates are, but I pay Colquitt EMC\r\n10 cents \/ kwh while CEMC pays me 4.5 cents \/ kwh,\r\nso even though I send CEMC far more power than I get from them,\r\nI still end up paying the power company (almost) every month.\r\n

\r\nThis is because while the\r\n\r\nO.C.G.A. \u00a7 46-3-50 The Georgia Cogeneration and Distributed Generation Act of 2001<\/a>\r\nrequires your electric utility to buy power you generate,\r\nit also lets that utility set the rate.\r\nSpecifically, utilities set it at what they call their “avoided rate”,\r\nwhich is what they claim they’d have to pay to generate the same amount\r\nof power elsewhere.\r\nNevermind the utility actually saves by\r\nno line losses for locally generated power,\r\nplus\r\nnot having to build more power plants soon if ever,’\r\nas\r\n\r\nAustin Energy discovered in a study in 2013<\/a>.\r\nMinnesota discovered the same thing in 2014<\/a>, adding in less pollution and reliable fixed price power for decades.\r\nSo actually Georgia Power and CEMC should be paying more<\/em>\r\nfor locally generated solar power than they’re charging customers.\r\nMe, I’d be happy with getting the same rate I pay,\r\nand simple one-to-one net metering is also what many solar advocates\r\nrecommend.\r\n

\r\nAnd things are already changing rapidly.\r\nBack in 2003, Austin Energy, formerly anti-solar,\r\n\r\nran the numbers<\/a>\r\nand discovered that through solar rebates it could get as much\r\nenergy as building a coal plant, and get it faster, on time,\r\non budget, and distributed so it doesn’t fail as often.\r\nSo Austin Energy did that, suddenly turning into a solar champion.\r\n

\r\n2015 seems to be the year Georgia Power and Southern Company are finally\r\nturning.\r\nNow Austin Energy is a tiny one-metro-area utility and Southern Company\r\nis the four-state second largest electric utility in the country,\r\nso don’t expect the change to be quite as quick.\r\n

\r\nBut it’s happening.\r\nGeorgia Power is doing\r\n\r\nfour 30 MW solar plants at four military bases in Georgia<\/a>.\r\nThis helps the U.S. military in its goal\r\n\r\nto switch to renewable energy to reduce casualties and vulnerabilities<\/a>\r\nand to prevent wars.\r\n

\r\nPlus Georgia Power is buying or building numerous other solar plants\r\nall over Georgia, including\r\n99 MW in Decatur County<\/a>.\r\n

\r\nPerhaps most significantly, Georgia Power claims credit<\/a>\r\nfor the new solar power purchase agreement law.\r\nThat never would have happened if not for\r\n\r\nyears of statewide activism<\/a>.\r\nActivism that finally resulted in\r\nboth houses of the most corruption-prone legislature<\/a> in the country\r\n\r\nunanimously passing<\/a> and\r\na governor who took campaign finance funds from\r\na long list of fossil fuel companies<\/a>\r\nsigning\r\n\r\nHB 57<\/a>, a law that lets solar installers offer third party financing.\r\nSuch Power Purchase Agreements are how SolarCity and others in other states\r\noffer zero-down financing with payments less than the former electric bill,\r\nwith complete payoff usually in five to ten years.\r\nNow that’s possible in Georgia.\r\n

\r\nRight now Georgia Power has billboards all over Valdosta promoting solar power,\r\nwhich seems to be anticipating Southern Company CEO Tom Fanning’s promise at the May 2015 Stockholder Meeting that people would be able to buy solar panels for their roof from SO this July.\r\nMore on that in another blog post.\r\n

\r\nSo while Georgia Power and Southern Company are still unfortunately pushing their last-century nuke boondoggle, they’re also finally seriously promoting solar power.\r\nAnd as they enter the fast-growing industry in the country, they’ll soon discover that nukes will be left to dry in the rising sun.\r\n

\r\n -jsq\r\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While electric bills still are tilted against local solar generation and Georgia Power continues to levy its stealth CWIP tax for its nuke boondoggle, yet solar power is rising this year on Southern Company and Georgia Power. Bret Wagenhorst posted on facebook 9 June 2015: I find it decidedly ironic that a large portion of […]","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[606,142,14,264,265,18,20,104,24],"tags":[8794,492,4792,8780,8746,8704,8754,8755,8701,8708,8702,8710,12,7,8737,8714,8812,108,1695,491,6],"class_list":["post-13277","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-austinenergy","category-cwip","category-economy","category-energy-conservation","category-energy-efficiency","category-georgia-power","category-law","category-nuclear","category-solar","tag-austinenergy","tag-bret-wagenhorst","tag-cemc","tag-colquitt-emc","tag-cwip","tag-economy","tag-energy-conservation","tag-energy-efficiency","tag-georgia","tag-georgia-power","tag-lake","tag-law","tag-lowndes-area-knowledge-exchange","tag-lowndes-county","tag-nuclear","tag-solar","tag-solarcity","tag-southern-company","tag-tift-county","tag-tifton","tag-valdosta"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-3s9","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13277","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13277"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13277\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13279,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13277\/revisions\/13279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}