{"id":18373,"date":"2017-04-25T13:47:46","date_gmt":"2017-04-25T17:47:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/?p=18373"},"modified":"2017-08-04T09:00:17","modified_gmt":"2017-08-04T13:00:17","slug":"duke-energy-solar-nc-sc-and-now-florida","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2017\/04\/duke-energy-solar-nc-sc-and-now-florida.html","title":{"rendered":"Duke Energy solar: NC, SC, and now Florida"},"content":{"rendered":"

\r\nDuke’s new solar farms in Florida echo what Duke was already doing\r\nthree and a half years ago when\r\nan independent study concluded more solar power in North Carolina<\/a>\r\nwould save utility ratepayers tens of millions of dollars annually.\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\n
\r\n\r\nDuke solar power farm in Perry, Florida, courtesy Duke Energy<\/a>\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nJohn Downey,\r\nCharlotte Business Journal, 23 October 2013,\r\n\r\nStudy: Solar benefits outweigh costs in NC<\/a>,\r\n\r\n\r\n

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\r\nIt notes the gains from solar projects — such as lower\r\ntransmission and distribution costs, avoided emissions, lower losses\r\nof electricity in transmission.\r\n\r\nThe study calculates that such benefits<\/a>\r\noutweigh the costs by 30 percent to 40 percent.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

The utility buying most of that solar power in North Carolina\r\nis none other than Duke Energy.\r\n\r\n\"Parcel<\/a>\r\n\r\n\r\nIn Florida, Duke just got approval from the Suwannee Board of County Commissioners<\/a>\r\nto build a 62-acre 8.8 MW solar plant next to its Suwannee Power Plant,\r\nwhile shutting down some old natural gas generating turbines,\r\nand keeping some newer ones going.\r\n

\r\nAs we learned only a week before at\r\n\r\na meeting about the Basin Management Action Plans (BMAPs) required by the Florida legislature<\/a>,\r\nnitrogen runoff from fertilizers is a huge problem in the Suwannee River Basin,\r\nand needs to be reduced 80-90% from every source.\r\nDuke Energy (or even FPL) could buy power from distributed solar farms\r\non 1030 more acres in Suwannee County and produce enough power to shut down\r\nthe rest of its gas turbines at that Suwannee River facility,\r\nwhile generating enough power for twice the number of households in Suwannee County.\r\nThat would \r\nremove power plant emissions and use of cooling water, while\r\nhelping solve the BMAP problem.\r\n

No, I’m not recommending cutting down trees for solar panels.\r\nRooftop solar power and solar panels on marginal farmland would make far more sense.\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nAs even Duke says, solar panels produce “little to no waste”,\r\nwhich means no fertilizer or pesticide runoff from them.\r\nGraze cows, sheep, or goats around them, and the farmer has income from both the solar panels and the livestock, while still needing no pesticides to control weeds.\r\nThat’s what Sandy Hill Solar of Elm City, North Carolina<\/a> does, and the utility buying their power is Duke Energy. \r\n

\r\nDuke by February 2015 had expanded its solar buying into South Carolina<\/a>,\r\nand by October 2015 announced a new solar farm near Perry, Florida<\/a>, Duke’s second such project in Florida,\r\nand operational in Perry by September 2016<\/a>.\r\nFunny how solar plants can go online in less than a year,\r\nunlike the three-year-plus permitting process of interstate natural gas pipelines.\r\n

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