{"id":525,"date":"2012-09-01T07:00:51","date_gmt":"2012-09-01T11:00:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2012\/09\/company-to-build-90-mw-solar-and-become-a-utility.html"},"modified":"2012-09-01T07:00:51","modified_gmt":"2012-09-01T11:00:51","slug":"company-to-build-90-mw-solar-and-become-a-utility","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2012\/09\/company-to-build-90-mw-solar-and-become-a-utility.html","title":{"rendered":"Company to build 90 MW solar and become a utility"},"content":{"rendered":"

\nWhat to do if you can’t interest Georgia Power in building solar?\nDo it yourself, and do enough so you can be a utility yourself.\nThat’s the loophole in the 1973\n\nElectric Territorial Act<\/a>\nthat FPL and JEA use to burn coal at Plant Scherer in Georgia and export the power to Florida.\nNow Georgia Solar Utilities Inc. is using the loophole for a better purpose:\nbuilding almost twice as much solar generation\nas Georgia Power’s meager 50 MW.\n<\/p>\n

\n\n\"Georgia<\/a>\nDave Williams wrote for the Atlanta Business Chronicle yesterday\n\nNew Georgia utility pitches solar plant:\nA new utility is planning to build a $320 million solar power plant on 2,200 acres adjacent to Georgia Power Co’s coal-burning Plant Branch near Milledgeville, Ga.<\/a>\n<\/p>\n

\n

\nGeorgia Solar Utilities Inc. initially approached Georgia Power, a\nunit of Southern Co. (NYSE: SO), with a proposal to build the plant\nand sell it to Georgia Power through a power-purchasing agreement.\n<\/p>\n

\nGeorgia Power is retiring two coal-fired units at Plant Branch, part\nof a move to reduce the Atlanta-based utility’s reliance on coal.\n<\/p>\n

\nBut when Georgia Power officials declined to take part in the\nproject last May, Georgia Solar Utilities executives decided to\nbuild the plant on their own and operate it as a new utility\nindependent of Georgia Power.\n<\/p>\n

\nOnce cost prohibitive, solar energy has become competitive with\nfossil fuels because of the rising costs of coal and tighter\ngovernment regulation of coal emissions, said Robert Green, founder\nof Georgia Solar Utilities.\n<\/p>\n

\n“When you don’t have to buy coal or worry about environmental\nhangovers, it overwhelms the costs of fossil fuels, Green said\nThursday after presenting the proposal to the Georgia Public Service\nCommission’s Energy Committee.\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\nSome say the PSC can’t approve such a utility because of that 1973 law.\nI suspect that if they don’t approve this proposal, the next one\nwill be even harder to turn down, and the next one,\nas they become even more competitive.\n<\/p>\n

\nHow competitive?\n<\/p>\n\n\n

\n

\nGreen said Solar Energy Utilities already has obtained bond\nfinancing for the project, taking advantage of historically low\ninterest rates.\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\nAnd they didn’t have to get a federal loan guarantee,\nor get the state to let them charge customers before\nthe plant is built, or get the PSC to let them charge\ncost overruns to customers, all unlike Georgia Power\nand Southern Company’s nuke boondoggle at Plant Vogtle.\n<\/p>\n

\nSouthern Company shareholders take note:\nif SO keeps stonewalling for nuclear boondoggles and\ndirty fossil fuels, the SO dinosaur will be leapfrogged\nby solar-powered mammals like\nGeorgia Solar Utilities Inc.\n<\/p>\n

\nMany SO shareholders are Georgia voters.\nYou can speed up this process by electing new GA PSC members and\nlegislators who will change that 1973 law so not only big companies\ncan generate solar and wind power and sell it through the grid,\nbut you can, too, from your own rooftops or parking lots.\n<\/p>\n

\n-jsq\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What to do if you can’t interest Georgia Power in building solar? Do it yourself, and do enough so you can be a utility yourself. That’s the loophole in the 1973 Electric Territorial Act that FPL and JEA use to burn coal at Plant Scherer in Georgia and export the power to Florida. Now Georgia […]","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":[216,142,14,49,17,8,18,2,19,20,104,21,22,23,24],"tags":[8753,8746,8704,8707,8701,8708,101,8699,8710,25,8737,8711,8712,8713,8714,108],"class_list":["post-525","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-coal","category-cwip","category-economy","category-elections","category-ga-psc","category-georgia","category-georgia-power","category-government","category-history","category-law","category-nuclear","category-planning","category-politics","category-renewable-energy","category-solar","tag-coal","tag-cwip","tag-economy","tag-ga-psc","tag-georgia","tag-georgia-power","tag-georgia-solar-utilities","tag-government","tag-law","tag-moores-law","tag-nuclear","tag-planning","tag-politics","tag-renewable-energy","tag-solar","tag-southern-company"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-8t","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525","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=525"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}