{"id":1983,"date":"2011-05-25T14:50:56","date_gmt":"2011-05-25T18:50:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/05\/southern-company-bullish-on-solar.html"},"modified":"2011-05-25T14:50:56","modified_gmt":"2011-05-25T18:50:56","slug":"southern-company-bullish-on-solar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/05\/southern-company-bullish-on-solar.html","title":{"rendered":"Southern Company “bullish” on solar"},"content":{"rendered":"Colleen Kiernan, director of the Georgia chapter of the Sierra Club,\nwrote in the Atlanta Business Chronicle 22 May 2011,\n\nWind energy a viable option for Southern Co.\u2019s portfolio<\/a>:\n
\n\n<\/a>\nTwo years ago, Southern Co. claimed “Renewable energy sources like wind\nand solar are not really an option for us in the Southeast.”\n

\nNow the new CEO, Thomas Fanning, says he’s “bullish” on solar. While\nthe new attitude on solar is refreshing,\n<\/blockquote>\nI’ve seen this before.\nAustinEnergy went in one year from solar isn’t an option to\n\n\nstarting\nthe most agressive rooftop solar deployment program in the country.\nWhy?\nSimple economics.\nWith Austin growing 10% a year, they needed more power.\nThey could go nuclear (tried that in the ’80s:\nlate, overbudget, and huge political resistance),\ncoal (but Austin prides itself on clean industry),\nor it turned out that rooftop solar would generate just as much energy\nfor the same investment in the form of installation rebates,\nwould be distributed so it wouldn’t all fail at once,\nand would produce the most when it was needed the most:\non hot summer days.\nPeak load, ahoy!\n

\nSounds like Southern Company finally ran the numbers.\n

\nColleen Kiernan continued:\n

\nI am puzzled by Southern’s attitude about offshore wind, which is\ncontinues to be “it won’t work on the Georgia coast.”\n

\n…\n

\nThe best way for Southern to position itself for the future is to invest\nin offshore wind. Since South Carolina and North Carolina have very\nlong coasts, and Georgia a short one, with only the Northern part good\nfor wind development, it makes sense to form a consortium to share the\ncosts and risks of off-shore development. (Duke Power and Santee Cooper\nare rumored to already be considering this strategy — Southern should\nseriously consider joining in.)\n<\/blockquote>\nThat would be the same Duke Energy that just\n\nbombed in biomass.<\/a>\nMaybe they decided to try something new.\n

\nMeanwhile, Southern Company has been dithering.\nMaybe they should listen to one of their former executives,\nSonny Murphy, now Chairman of Sterling Planet.\nNo, not the silly stubborn part.<\/a>\nThe part about\n\nthe community embraced Wiregrass Solar and wants to expand it,<\/a>\nplus it’s easy money what with the GEFA investment,\nease of permitting, and speed of implementation.\n

\nSterling also\n\nalready sells wind,<\/a> as in\n

\nSterling Wind\u2122, nationally sourced 100% wind energy\n<\/blockquote>\nSterling could source some wind from Georgia Power if Georgia Power\nwas producing it….\n

\n-jsq\n

\nPS: Owed to Ed Griffith.\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Colleen Kiernan, director of the Georgia chapter of the Sierra Club, wrote in the Atlanta Business Chronicle 22 May 2011, Wind energy a viable option for Southern Co.\u2019s portfolio: Two years ago, Southern Co. claimed “Renewable energy sources like wind and solar are not really an option for us in the Southeast.” Now the new […]","protected":false},"author":1,"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":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[97,596,606,120,47,40,18,19,21,23,24,1794,36,1521],"tags":[8794,8704,8708,8713,8714,108,8840,8716],"class_list":["post-1983","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-activism","category-adage","category-austinenergy","category-biomass","category-climate-change","category-community","category-georgia-power","category-history","category-planning","category-renewable-energy","category-solar","category-sterling-planet","category-wind","category-wiregrass-solar","tag-austinenergy","tag-economy","tag-georgia-power","tag-renewable-energy","tag-solar","tag-southern-company","tag-sterling-planet","tag-wind"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-vZ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1983","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1983"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1983\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}