{"id":3696,"date":"2013-05-30T04:37:27","date_gmt":"2013-05-30T08:37:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/?p=3696"},"modified":"2013-05-30T04:43:15","modified_gmt":"2013-05-30T08:43:15","slug":"privatize-tva-southern-company-would-like-that","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2013\/05\/privatize-tva-southern-company-would-like-that.html","title":{"rendered":"Privatize TVA? Southern Company would like that"},"content":{"rendered":"

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nThe hydropower assets of the Tennessee Valley Authority\r\nwould give Southern Company a way to avoid doing distributed solar for a while.\r\nWill SO CEO Tom Fanning and Georgia Power CEO Paul Bowers\r\nbit the bullet and go straight for distributed solar instead of\r\nhelping Duke privatize TVA for a short-term stopgap that would\r\nset both of them farther behind the disruptive solar curve?\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n\r\n\"SolarCity<\/a>\r\n
\r\nBlue line: SCTY; red line: SO, chart by\r\nGoogle Finance<\/a>.\r\n
\r\nMay 16th:\r\n\r\nGoldman Sachs invested $500 million in SCTY<\/a>.\r\n
\r\nMay 22nd:\r\n\r\nSO stockholder meeting<\/a>.\r\n
\r\nMay 24th:\r\n\r\nS&P downgrades SO<\/a>.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nWes Patoka wrote for Motley Fool 24 May 2013,\r\n\r\nWho Benefits the Most if the TVA Is Privatized<\/a>,\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n

\r\nThe Southern Company is pays out 85 percent of its earnings and\r\nsports a dividend of 4.4% percent, slightly higher than Duke’s.\r\nSouthern Company’s 18.5% operating margin is coming from the coal\r\nplummeting in price. This gives The Southern Company a competitive\r\ncost structure today,\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\n but it will need to spend billions upgrading\r\nits fleet to comply with federal regulations. The TVA’s hydro-power\r\nassets would give the Southern Company a quick solution to its\r\nfossil fuel heavy fleet.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\n\r\nKemper Coal crashing SO’s stock<\/a>\r\ngives SO more incentive to do something about its fossil fuel addiction,\r\nand its\r\n\r\n19 months late and $1 billion over budget nukes at Plant Vogtle<\/a>.\r\nWhich will it be, SO?\r\nTVA to delay the inevitable, or distributed solar now and lead the region\r\nand the world?\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n

\r\nNeither of these two old guard electric companies can compare to\r\nSolar City’s (NASDAQ: SCTY) renewable revenue mix. SolarCity takes a\r\ndifferent approach to electricity generation. SolarCity is\r\ninstalling solar panels on homes and selling the power back to the\r\nhomeowners. This strategy gives SolarCity long term revenue\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\ncontracts, but requires massive capital investment up front.\r\nRecently\r\n\r\nGoldman Sachs gave SolarCity’s business model a $500\r\nmillion vote of confidence<\/a> and it boosted the stock 25% in one day.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nAs the cost per watt keeps going down on solar panels, SolarCity’s\r\ncontracts with its customers will look more lucrative to homeowners\r\nin sunny states. This could mean that SolarCity will be picking off\r\ncustomers from traditional grid companies one by one. Could this\r\ncompany diversify its revenue streams to bring itself to\r\nprofitability by picking up generating capacity or regulated\r\ncustomers?\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nRemember,\r\n\r\nFDR is the villain of SO’s corporate hagiography Big Bets<\/a>,\r\nbecause\r\nhe created TVA, carving it out of territory SO claimed, and because\r\nof his\r\n

\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\n…insinuations that all utilities were guilty of betraying the\r\npublic’s trust. He also proclaimed the rights of any community\r\nunhappy with its service to take over private utility operations and\r\ndevelop their own power sites—a “birch rod in the\r\ncupboard” to be used when good service was not provided by\r\nprivate companies.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nIs it any wonder SO and Georgia Power don’t want\r\nSB 51 passed<\/a>,\r\nmodifying the antique 1973 Territorial Electric Service Act\r\nto enable distributed solar power?\r\nBut maybe we the voters and ratepayers do.\r\nIt’s time for SO to make a big bet on solar, before it’s all water over the dam.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n -jsq\r\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The hydropower assets of the Tennessee Valley Authority would give Southern Company a way to avoid doing distributed solar for a while. Will SO CEO Tom Fanning and Georgia Power CEO Paul Bowers bit the bullet and go straight for distributed solar instead of helping Duke privatize TVA for a short-term stopgap that would set […]","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":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[14,8,18,23,24,1019],"tags":[6129,8704,2137,8701,8708,6303,3244,1623,8702,12,7,661,8713,637,6304,1523,8714,8812,108,2532,8789,6343,1399,6],"class_list":["post-3696","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economy","category-georgia","category-georgia-power","category-renewable-energy","category-solar","category-solarcity","tag-disruptive","tag-economy","tag-fdr","tag-georgia","tag-georgia-power","tag-goldman-sachs","tag-hydro","tag-hydroelectric","tag-lake","tag-lowndes-area-knowledge-exchange","tag-lowndes-county","tag-massachusetts","tag-renewable-energy","tag-rooftop","tag-scty","tag-so","tag-solar","tag-solarcity","tag-southern-company","tag-stock","tag-tennessee","tag-tennessee-valley-authority","tag-tva","tag-valdosta"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-XC","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3696","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=3696"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3696\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3703,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3696\/revisions\/3703"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}