{"id":9177,"date":"2014-05-29T16:08:37","date_gmt":"2014-05-29T20:08:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/?p=9177"},"modified":"2014-05-29T16:15:19","modified_gmt":"2014-05-29T20:15:19","slug":"slight-changes-at-southern-company-so-2014-05-28","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2014\/05\/slight-changes-at-southern-company-so-2014-05-28.html","title":{"rendered":"Slight changes at Southern Company @ SO 2014-05-28"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n
\n<\/a>
\nSolar car charging station at the
\n
\nSouthern Company Stockholder Meeting<\/a>:
\nthat’s new.
\nOther solar changes were detectable, if you knew what to look for,
\nand with hints from
\n
\nSO CEO Tom Fanning<\/a> and
\n
\nnew R&D VP Larry Monroe<\/a>
\nhere are some, while we’re waiting on SO for video and transcript.<\/p>\n

Two demonstration solar charging cars were on the lawn outside the breakfast tent:
\n
\n\"300x225<\/a>
\na Cadillac and I think the other one was a Nissan.<\/p>\n

There was<\/em> a tiger team report last summer:
\nit was internal, and much of it is being implemented.
\nWhen Tom Fanning included
\n
\nhis announcement of that tiger team last year<\/a> in an answer to
\none of my questions,<\/p>\n

he never said the report would be public.
\nIt’s pretty clear from talking to Fanning and Monroe afterwards that
\nthat report is very unlikely to be made public.
\nThe phrase Monroe used was “brutally honest”.
\nWho knows?
\nMaybe it even mentioned that phrase popular on Wall Street now:
\nthe
\n
\n“death spiral” for utilities that don’t do solar<\/a>
\nalluded to by
\n
\nSteven Chu<\/a>;
\nrenewables also figured into the
\n
\nUBS downgrade of SO to sell of May 2014<\/a>.
\nI, for one, can understand why SO might not want to publish
\na report like that, yet would want to proceed with doing something about it.<\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/a>
\nOK, what are they doing?
\nSome things are subtle.
\nTwo years ago
\n
\nTom Fanning was quoted by Joseph Rago in the WSJ as saying:<\/a><\/p>\n

\n“Now I’m as excited about renewables as anybody. But they\u2019re a niche play.”\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\nNobody called solar or wind power a niche play this time.
\nAnd at least once this time, Fanning named “renewables” before<\/em>
\n“clean coal” in a list of “all of the above” energy sources.
\nFor years Fanning has repeatedly
\n
\nlisted this order<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

\n
\n<\/a>
\nnuclear, “21st century coal”, natural gas, renewables,
\nand efficiency.\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\nPutting renewables higher up the list is a change in emphasis.<\/p>\n

Fanning even emphasized Georgia Power’s claim,
\nlisted in Southern Company’s
\n
\nRenewables and Distributed Generation<\/a> PDF:<\/p>\n

\n

\nGeorgia Power is implementing the largest voluntary solar energy
\nportfolio of any utility in the nation. Recent phases of
\ndevelopment, called the Advanced Solar Initiative (ASI), include
\nplans to secure PPAs with large-scale solar projects through a
\ncompetitive-bidding process, as well as allowances for small- and
\nmedium-scale distributed generation. Through various phases,
\ninstalled capacity is projected to total nearly 800 MW of solar by
\n2016. Georgia Power has been recognized by the Solar Electric Power
\nAssociation as one of the top 10 utilities in the U.S. for solar.\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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

\nSure, Tom Fanning and Paul Bowers claimed Plant Vogtle was a success
\nand Fanning once again did his (if he hasn’t patented it he should)
\npaper cup demonstration of the emergency nuke water-dousing system.\n<\/p>\n

\nAnd this time Fanning, while admitting cost overruns and problems at
\nthe “clean coal” experiment at Plant Ratcliffe in Kemper County,
\nMississippi, he doubled down on the “advantages” of capturing carbon
\nonly to sell it to oil companies to pump more oil out of the ground,
\nwhich would then be burned, producing more CO2.
\nHe also emphasized plans (previously
\nannounced 1 August 2008 by previous SO CEO David Ratcliffe<\/a>)
\nto sell the Kemper County technology to China. Good luck with that,
\nsince he also didn’t deny that no power whatever had been generated
\nfrom coal at Plant Ratcliffe yet.\n<\/p>\n


\n\"300x225<\/a>
\nSO cannot bring itself to abandon its big baseload projects at Plant
\nVogtle or Plant Ratcliffe, but it is doing some additional
\ninteresting things.\n<\/p>\n

\nFanning said he didn’t believe wind off the Georgia coast was cost-effective.
\nAfter the meeting Monroe told me lower-speed wind turbines would be necessary.
\nBe that as it may, both of them also emphasized SO’s purchases of wind energy
\nfrom other states, such as mentioned in that
\n
\nRenewables and Distributed Generation<\/a> PDF:<\/p>\n

\n

\nSouthern Company has ongoing wind research projects, and some of our
\nsubsidiaries are importing wind energy from other regions when it is
\ncost-effective based on the delivered price to the Southern Company
\nsystem’s service territory.\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\nCEO Fanning said in the meeting he still didn’t think it was time for the
\nutility-owned rooftop solar idea he mentioned last year
\n(and that
\n
\nformer Department of Energy Secretary Steven Chu<\/a>
\nis also advocating).<\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/a>
\nAfter the meeting, Fanning told me one result of the internal tiger team report
\nwas that SO was buying even more solar power than it was required to,
\nincluding bidding for solar plants on military bases.
\nKristi Swartz
\n
\nwho wrote a week before about that Georgia 3×30 Project<\/a>,
\nwas at yesterday’s SO stockholder meeting.<\/p>\n

\nDuring that meeting,
\nFanning said he thought the missing element for distributed solar was storage.
\nOk, fine; that’s a popular delaying tactic.
\nBut then it got interesting:
\nhe alluded to two storage projects SO is working on.<\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/a>
\nFanning SO is involved in a major west-coast storage project.
\nHe also said he drives and electric car.
\nBefore the meeting he told me it was a Tesla,
\nwhich is not a secret, given others have seen it in the SO parking lot in Atlanta.
\nAre we supposed to put T for Tesla and S for storage together
\nand infer that SO is involved in
\n
\nTesla’s battery gigafactory<\/a>?<\/p>\n

Fanning also talked about SO involvement in research on
\nCompressed Air Energy Storage (CAES).
\nSO gets the credit for initiating that research,
\n“Southern Company approached Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) with a request to evaluate the business case for additional storage on their bulk power grid,”
\nin
\n
\nSouthern Company Energy Storage Study: A Study for the DOE Energy Storage Systems Program<\/a>,
\nby James Ellison, Dhruv Bhatnagar, Clifton Black, and Kip Jenkins,
\nSandia National Laboratories Report, SAND2013-2251, March 2013.
\n
\n<\/a>
\nThat report also compares flywheel and battery storage systems.
\nFanning in the meeting mentioned possible storage in caves
\nor otherwise underground in a variation on the kind of pumping
\nused in the Kemper Coal carbon-capture to oil extraction cycle.
\nWhile I’m nervous about anything, even air, being pumped into
\nthe ground, especially if it’s underneath our drinking water aquifer,
\nat least SO is trying something.<\/p>\n

\nWhile it’s not clear to me why mighty Southern Company can’t make a big bet
\nbusiness case out of distributed solar and wind without improved storage,
\nI wholeheartedly agree that improved storage would be a great thing.
\nAs Kristi Swartz wrote in
\n
\nthat article about the Georgia Power and Army solar Georgia 3×30 Project<\/a>,
\nGeorgia “could be a model for other states”.
\nIf Southern Company can solve the storage problem too, SO can lead the country
\nand the world.<\/p>\n

\n -jsq<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Solar car charging station at the Southern Company Stockholder Meeting: that’s new. Other solar changes were detectable, if you knew what to look for, and with hints from SO CEO Tom Fanning and new R&D VP Larry Monroe here are some, while we’re waiting on SO for video and transcript. Two demonstration solar charging cars […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[216,264,265,18,6124,104,23,24,36],"tags":[7675,2368,2373,8753,8754,8755,8701,8708,548,8702,12,562,8737,2369,8713,2367,8714,108,4604,8716],"class_list":["post-9177","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-coal","category-energy-conservation","category-energy-efficiency","category-georgia-power","category-natural-gas-2","category-nuclear","category-renewable-energy","category-solar","category-wind","tag-28-may-2014","tag-callaway-gardens","tag-ceo-thomas-a-fanning","tag-coal","tag-energy-conservation","tag-energy-efficiency","tag-georgia","tag-georgia-power","tag-john-s-quarterman","tag-lake","tag-lowndes-area-knowledge-exchange","tag-natural-gas","tag-nuclear","tag-pine-mountain","tag-renewable-energy","tag-shareholder-meeting","tag-solar","tag-southern-company","tag-storage","tag-wind"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9177","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=9177"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9177\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9180,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9177\/revisions\/9180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}