{"id":4635,"date":"2013-07-09T09:00:38","date_gmt":"2013-07-09T13:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/?p=4635"},"modified":"2013-07-16T08:58:35","modified_gmt":"2013-07-16T12:58:35","slug":"f-is-for-solar-in-georgia-45-in-2013-state-solar-power-rankings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2013\/07\/f-is-for-solar-in-georgia-45-in-2013-state-solar-power-rankings.html","title":{"rendered":"F is for solar in Georgia, #45 in 2013 state solar power rankings"},"content":{"rendered":"

\r\nF for all three main Southern Company states:\r\nGeorgia<\/a>,\r\nAlabama<\/a>,\r\nand\r\nMississippi<\/a>.\r\nFlorida manages a B for rank #23, presumably because\r\nSO only covers part of the panhandle.\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nCoincidence?\r\nWhile\r\n\r\nSO’s tiger team studies someday maybe doing something about distributed solar<\/a>,\r\nthe\r\n\r\nGeorgia Public Service Commission could double solar requirements\r\non Georgia Power this week<\/a>.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nYou can clearly see those three SO states\r\non this\r\n\r\nmap by GigaOm<\/a>:\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nSolar Power Rocks.com asked 19 June 2013 in\r\n\r\n2013 State Solar Power Rankings<\/a>,\r\n

\r\n\u201cHow do we recognize and reward legislatures for admirable solar energy policy while holding them accountable to do better?\u201d\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nThese grades and ranks are even worse than\r\n\r\nthe ones for solar jobs in May from The Solar Foundation<\/a>,\r\nbecause Solar Power Rocks.com looked at more factors.\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nGeorgia is #45 out of 51 (DC is #6).\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\n

\r\n

\r\nAlso at 0.9 suns, Georgia may have even less going for it than\r\nWyoming, so far as solar power goes. Except for the minority of\r\nGeorgians lucky enough to be TVA customers, there is literally\r\nnothing incentivizing solar in the state. While there is technically\r\na law establishing net metering in the state, that law is woefully\r\ninadequate, receiving an F from both us and our colleagues over at\r\nFreeing the Grid. You’ve heard us say it over and over again, but we\r\ncan’t stress it enough — the best place to start building is\r\nwith a high-target RPS that forces the utilities to start easing\r\ncustomers transition to producing their own solar power.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nCould be worse. Alabama is #46.\r\n

\r\n

\r\nAlabama starts our bottom 5, the third state in a row with\r\napproximately 0.9 suns. We can sum up solar power in The Heart of\r\nDixie in two sentences. If you’re a TVA customer, you can cash in on\r\nboth a rebate and ongoing performance payments. If you’re not a TVA\r\ncustomer, there’s nothing at all — not even mandatory net\r\nmetering this time.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nOr worse than that. Mississippi is #49.\r\n

\r\n

\r\nMississippi closes out the 40s with just 0.65 suns. We’ve seen this\r\npattern before in the South; if you’re a TVA customer, you can cash\r\nin on a $1,000 upfront rebate and ongoing performance payments to\r\nthe tune of 12 cents for every kilowatt hour of solar power you\r\nproduce. If you’re not a TVA customer? You got it. Not a single\r\npiece of solar policy at all. And of course, like the rest of the\r\nstates with little to no solar support, there’s no place to start\r\nlike a strong RPS with an even strong solar carve-out!\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nWho is responsible for these failing grades?\r\nTwo men more than anyone else:\r\n\r\nSO CEO Tom Fanning and Georgia Power CEO Paul Bowers<\/a>.\r\nThey’re also the two people who could turn this titanic ship around.\r\nWill they?\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nThe GA PSC tugboat\r\n\r\ncould nudge Georgia Power towards the sun this week<\/a>.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n -jsq\r\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"F for all three main Southern Company states: Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi. Florida manages a B for rank #23, presumably because SO only covers part of the panhandle. Coincidence? While SO’s tiger team studies someday maybe doing something about distributed solar, the Georgia Public Service Commission could double solar requirements on Georgia Power this week. […]","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":[14,17,8,18,2,23,24],"tags":[8759,8704,8707,8701,8708,8699,8702,12,7,217,4253,145,108,6],"class_list":["post-4635","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economy","category-ga-psc","category-georgia","category-georgia-power","category-government","category-renewable-energy","category-solar","tag-alabama","tag-economy","tag-ga-psc","tag-georgia","tag-georgia-power","tag-government","tag-lake","tag-lowndes-area-knowledge-exchange","tag-lowndes-county","tag-mississippi","tag-renewable-portfolio-standard","tag-rps","tag-southern-company","tag-valdosta"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-1cL","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4635","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=4635"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4635\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4724,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4635\/revisions\/4724"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4635"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4635"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}