{"id":13551,"date":"2015-07-06T06:51:31","date_gmt":"2015-07-06T10:51:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/?p=13551"},"modified":"2015-07-06T07:03:36","modified_gmt":"2015-07-06T11:03:36","slug":"southern-company-and-duke-backing-solar-florida","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2015\/07\/southern-company-and-duke-backing-solar-florida.html","title":{"rendered":"Southern Company and Duke backing solar Florida"},"content":{"rendered":"

\r\nAre all the fracking utitilies finally seeing the sunlight?\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nBy Backing solar power\r\nin Florida, are Duke, Southern Company, TECO, and even FPL’s parent NextEra\r\nhedging their bets, or finally realizing where the future is?\r\n

\r\nReem Nasr, CNBC, 12 June 2015,\r\n\r\nThe sleeping giant of the solar industry: Florida<\/a>,\r\n

\r\n

\r\nDuke Energy Florida told CNBC that it “is a strong supporter of\r\nsolar energy and we are committed to helping to grow solar in\r\nFlorida.” Last month it announced an additional 500 megawatts of\r\nsolar facilities by 2024, among other solar projects.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nMeanwhile in May Duke Energy of Charlotte, North Carolina\r\nbought 7.5% of Sabal Trail, along with Spectra Energy of Houston\r\nand NextEra Energy of Juno Beach, Florida.\r\n

\r\n

\r\nSouthern Co., which owns Florida’s Gulf Power, said the following:\r\n<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

\r\n“Southern Company is strategically developing solar as part of the\r\nfull portfolio of energy resources needed to provide customers\r\nclean, safe, reliable and affordable power. As part of this\r\ncommitment, subsidiary Gulf Power recently announced that the\r\nFlorida Public Service Commission approved three solar projects\r\ntotaling 120 megawatts, in addition to other customer-focused solar\r\nefforts.”\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nThat fits with SO subsidiary Georgia Power doing\r\n\r\nfour 30 MW each military solar projects in Georgia<\/a>, plus\r\n\r\nbuying into civilian solar farms 99 MW at a time<\/a>.\r\nSuch Georgia Power projects have led to\r\n\r\nGeorgia leading the country in solar jobs<\/a>.\r\nGeorgia Power even \r\nclaimed credit<\/a> for the\r\nsolar financing law<\/a> that passed this year,\r\nand weeks before it took effect July 1st, \r\nGeorgia Power advertised<\/a> that it would start selling rooftop solar panels\r\non that date.\r\n

\r\nThis stuff didn’t happen in a vacuum.\r\n\r\nPeople across Georgia led by Georgia Sierra Club and others<\/a>\r\nagitated for it for several years, including in June 2013 lobbying\r\nthe Georgia Public Service Commission to get Georgia Power to buy\r\ntwice as much solar power as it wanted.\r\nApparently Georgia Power and its parent Southern Company decided they\r\nlike that.\r\nEver since\r\n\r\nthe May 2015 Southern Company stockholder meeting<\/a>,\r\nSO CEO Tom Fanning has been saying\r\n“If somebody wants to buy distributed generation, I want to sell it to ’em.”\r\n

\r\nSouthern Company is now\r\n\r\nbragging on facebook about Georgia leading and SO’s part in that<\/a>, noting \r\n

\r\n

\r\nThe Atlanta Business Chronicle says our solar projects play a major\r\nrole in making Georgia the number 1 destination for clean energy\r\njobs.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nCarla Caldwell, ABC, 1 July 2015,\r\n\r\nReport: Georgia No. 1 for clean energy jobs<\/a>,\r\n

\r\n

\r\nIn Georgia, solar installation projects helped make it the No. 1\r\nstate for clean energy job announcements in Q1. Five projects, which\r\nwill cumulatively produce 382 megawatts of power from solar cells\r\nacross 3,500 acres in Taylor County, could create approximately\r\n2,000 jobs.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nMajor electric utility Southern Company (NYSE: SO) will purchase\r\npower from at least one of the projects, and others are lining up\r\nfor the rest, the group said.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nYet Southern Company also still builds new natural gas plants,\r\nand hasn’t taken a position regarding the fracked methane pipeline\r\nSabal Trail wants to gouge through SO territory, even though\r\nSouthern Company Services intervened with FERC on\r\nthe Sabal Trail docket<\/a> back in December.\r\n

\r\nBack to the CNBC story:\r\n

\r\n

\r\nTampa Electric told CNBC that it “believes in the promise of\r\nrenewable energy, such as solar power, because it plays an important\r\nrole in our energy future. We have a long history of developing\r\nsolar power, and we will continue to explore ways to increase our\r\ninvestment in a cost-effective manner that is fair to all customers.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n“We now have more than 600 customers with their own solar arrays,\r\nand we will continue to work with customers who want to connect to\r\nour system,” the company added.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nYet Kinder Morgan filed with FERC in March to build a pipeline\r\nfor TECO across north Florida to Jacksonville\r\n\r\nthat explicitly will connect to Sabal Trail if Sabal Trail requests that<\/a>.\r\n

\r\n

\r\nCNBC also reached out to Florida Power & Light, which did not\r\nrespond to the request for comment.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nYet even FPL’s parent NextEra, which is the founding partner and $3 billion funder of Sabal Trail,\r\nbought Hawaii’s biggest utility in December<\/a> for $4.3 billion\r\nin what Bloomberg called “Green Energy Test”, saying at the time:\r\n

\r\n

\r\n“You can think about Hawaii as a postcard from the future of\r\nwhat’s going to happen in the electric industry in the United\r\nStates,” James Robo, chairman and chief executive officer of\r\nJuno Beach, Florida-based NextEra, said by phone interview\r\nyesterday. “As renewable generation gets cheaper, as electric\r\nstorage becomes more efficient and possible, all electric utilities\r\nare going to have to face this.”\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nSooner rather than later.\r\nAfter all, the rosiest Wall Street projections for shale gas growth\r\nare for\r\n\r\n56% over 28 years,\r\nwhile solar power deployment already increased 200% over 2 years, 2012-2014<\/a>.\r\nThat continues a long-term trend of solar power\r\ndoubling every two years, and that’s\r\na factor of four seen over four years<\/a>.\r\nWhich means that former FERC Chair Jon Wellinghoff was right back in 2013\r\nwhen he predicted that more U.S. electricity would come from solar than\r\nany other source within 10 years.\r\nWhich is eight more years, by 2023.\r\n

\r\nSolar power has exponential growth like compound interest, with\r\nfast, cheap, clean installations, while fracked methane only grows\r\nthrough slow, difficult, permitting processes followed by multi-year\r\nbuildouts for each pipeline, with court cases for eminent domain\r\nand massive resistance by everybody from Riverkeepers to reclusive\r\nright wing landowners.\r\nIt doesn’t take a prophet to see that SolarCity CEO Lyndon Rive is right:\r\n

\r\n“Solar will win eventually, it always does.”\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nAs Al Gore said recently<\/a>:\r\n

\r\n

“We\u2019re going to win this.\r\n

“The only question is how long it takes.”\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nThat and will solar win fast enough to stop the current fracked methane boondoggles.\r\n

\r\nNow what if Florida the sleeping solar giant finally does what\r\neven Georgia just did, and change its\r\n

\r\n

\r\n…laws in Florida that prohibit third-party power purchase agreements\r\n(PPAs). In a state like California, a solar company can lend panels\r\nto a homeowner and then sell the power generated by those panels\r\ndirectly to the owner—usually at a cheaper rate than a\r\ntraditional utility bill.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nBut that isn’t allowed in Florida. Nor can a homeowner sell power\r\ngenerated on his or her private property to anyone else, such as\r\nneighbors or tenants for example. In essence, the only entity that\r\ncan sell power in Florida, no matter where it is generated, is a\r\nregulated utility company. Florida is one out of only a handful of\r\nstates that do not allow third-party PPAs.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nSolarCity relies heavily on such models in its business plan. That\r\nis why currently, the company barely does business in the state.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n“Solar gives consumers choice, control and financial savings, plus\r\nit stimulates the local economy by creating jobs,” Rive said. “The\r\nincumbent does everything possible to prevent disruption.”\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nWell, the incumbent utility in Georgia just backed changing\r\nstate PPA restrictions, and its parent company is pushing solar\r\nin Florida, too.\r\nSo if Georgia can do it, even Florida can do it.\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nYou can help\r\n\r\nFloridians for Solar Choice<\/a>\r\nmake it happen.\r\nFlorida is one of only four states left that prohibit Power Purchase Agreements,\r\nand by far the most populous.\r\nWhen Florida goes, so goes the nation.\r\n

\r\nWhere’s your fracking pipeline to LNG export boondoggle then,\r\nfossil fuel industry?\r\n

\r\n -jsq\r\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"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 […]","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":[97,203,6687,24],"tags":[143,8751,8552,1763,8701,8702,12,7,7134,6076,1035,1036,6597,8714,108,6966,6],"class_list":["post-13551","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-activism","category-florida","category-pipeline-2","category-solar","tag-duke-energy","tag-florida","tag-floridians-for-solar-choice","tag-fpl","tag-georgia","tag-lake","tag-lowndes-area-knowledge-exchange","tag-lowndes-county","tag-nextera-energy","tag-pipeline","tag-power-purchase-agreement","tag-ppa","tag-sabal-trail-transmission","tag-solar","tag-southern-company","tag-spectra-energy","tag-valdosta"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-3wz","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13551","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=13551"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13551\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13555,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13551\/revisions\/13555"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13551"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13551"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13551"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}