Author Archives: Glenn

A tale of two states’ electricity rates

by Brian Hicks
Charleston 3/30/14 — John Bennett decided to skip Charleston’s psychotic winter this year and spend a few months in Florida.

But even in the Sunshine State he got a cold chill from the Lowcountry.

A few weeks ago Bennett’s Florida power bill came in about the same time as his forwarded bill from SCE&G. The comparison couldn’t have shocked him more if he’d had his finger in a light socket.

Even though he had used four times as much power in Florida as in his Charleston home, the bills were just $5 apart.

“I don’t understand how they’ve been allowed to get away with this for so long,” Bennett says.

Read the whole article: Charleson Post & Courier

Citigroup says the ‘Age of Renewables’ has begun

by Giles Parkinson
3/27/14 — Investment banking giant Citigroup has hailed the start of the “age of renewables” in the United States, the world’s biggest electricity market, saying that solar and wind energy are getting competitive with natural gas peaking and baseload plants – even in the US where gas prices are said to be low.

In a major new analysis released this week, Citi says the big decision makers within the US power industry are focused on securing low cost power, fuel diversity and stable cash flows, and this is drawing them increasingly to the “economics” of solar and wind, and how they compare with other technologies.

Much of the mainstream media – in the US and abroad – has been swallowing the fossil fuel Kool-Aid and hailing the arrival of cheap gas, through the fracking boom, as a new energy “revolution”, as if this would be a permanent state of affairs. But as we wrote last week, solar costs continue to fall even as gas prices double.

Citi’s report echoes that conclusion. Gas prices, it notes, are rising and becoming more volatile. This has made wind and solar and other renewable energy sources more attractive because they are not sensitive to fuel price volatility.

Read the whole article: Renew Economy

Fight over Rooftop Solar Forecasts a Bright Future for Cleaner Energy

by David Biello
3/25/14 — Americans have begun to battle over sunshine. In sun-scorched Arizona a regulatory skirmish has broken out over arrays of blue-black silicon panels on rooftops, threatening the local utilities that have ruled electricity generation for a century or more. With some of the best access to sunshine on the planet, Arizona boasts the second-most solar power in the U.S.—more than 1,000 megawatts and counting. The state hosts vast photovoltaic arrays in the desert as well as the nation’s first commercial power plant with the technology to use sunshine at night—by storing daytime heat in molten salts.

Read the whole article: Scientific American

Steven Chu Solves Utility Companies’ Death Spiral

by Jeff McMahon
3/21/14 — Utility companies have been looking for new regulations and higher connection charges to save them from a “death spiral” spurred by a surge in rooftop solar installations. Instead, says former Energy Secretary Steven Chu, they should get into the rooftop solar business.

Utilities are in danger of being FedExed, Chu said, “like the Post Office got FedExed,” as rooftop solar modules drop in price.

“The cost of modules has plummeted. In California where I live, that means for $10,000 you can generate a lot of electricity. The cost of batteries is plummeting, so that in five maybe 10 years at the outside, a $10,000 or $12,000 system will allow me to go, on average, 80 percent off grid.

“That’s pretty exciting. So this is a technology that could be disruptive to electricity production and generation.”

Read the whole article: Forbes

America’s Largest Grid Operator: Massive Renewables Push Won’t Be a Problem

by John Moore
3/17/14 — PJM Interconnection, the nation’s largest power transmission grid organization, announced recently that wind and solar power could generate about 30 percent of PJM’s total electricity for its territory covering the Mid-Atlantic region and part of the Midwest by 2026 without “any significant issues.”

That’s engineer-speak for “no big deal.” Even better, we would see more clean power at less cost and with far less pollution than our current mix of coal and natural gas power plants.

PJM’s new renewables integration report, prepared by General Electric, is required reading for anyone who questions the ability of the electric grid to handle large amounts of wind, solar and other renewable energy. GE estimates that about 113,000 megawatts of installed wind and solar power resources (including distributed/generation), could produce about 30 percent of the region’s total energy. That’s enough energy to power 23.5 million homes annually.

Read the whole article: Greentech Media

Infographic: US Solar’s Best Year Ever

GTM Research looks back at 2013, a record-breaking year.

by Mike Munsell, Jacob Rosenburg

3/6/14 — This week, GTM Research and SEIA released the Q4 2013 U.S. Solar Market Insight report. The infographic below highlights some key findings from the year-in-review report.

Read the whole article: greentechsolar:

MEAG creating three subsidiaries for Vogtle funding

by Ray Lightner
GRIFFIN 2/8/14 — The Municipal Electric Authority of Georgia (MEAG) is asking the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to allow it to create up to three wholly owned subsidiaries to help MEAG fund the expansion of the Vogtle nuclear power plant.

The expansion, adding reactors 3 and 4, has already been approved, with MEAG as one of the licensed co-owners, along with Southern Nuclear Operating Company, Georgia Power Company, Oglethorpe Power Corporation and the City of Dalton. MEAG owns 22.7 percent, Oglethorp Power owns 30 percent, City of Dalton owns 1.6 percent and Georgia Power owns the rest.

Southern Nuclear Operating Company operates Vogtle and is making the request, which would allow MEAG to create the three subsidiaries, dividing up MEAG’s 22.7 percent share of the electricity generated by the two new reactors.

Read the whole article: Griffin Daily News

Ga. Republican unveils solar bill

by Dave Williams
ATLANTA 1/28/14 — Georgia property owners would be able to contract directly with solar energy installers to finance the installation of solar panels under legislation introduced in the General Assembly Tuesday.

The bill would let property owners lease solar panels instead of having to buy them with cash up front, said Georgia Rep. Mike Dudgeon, R-Johns Creek, the bill’s sponsor.

“We want to make it clear that you can use whatever financing is available to finance your solar panel,” Dudgeon said.

Previous attempts by other lawmakers to grow Georgia’s solar industry by opening the market to third party financing have failed to gain headway in the General Assembly.

Read the whole article: Atlanta Business Chronicle

Fissures in G.O.P. as Some Conservatives Embrace Renewable Energy

by John Schwartz
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. 1/25/14 — In conservative politics, solar power is often dismissed as an affectation, part of a liberal agenda to funnel money to “solar cronies” of the Obama administration and further the “global warming hoax.”

So one would not expect to see Barry Goldwater Jr., the very picture of modern conservatism and son of the 1964 Republican nominee for president, arguing passionately on behalf of solar energy customers. But there he was last fall, very publicly opposing a push by Arizona’s biggest utility to charge as much as $100 a month to people who put solar panels on their roofs.

The utilities, backed by conservative business interests, argue that solar users who have lower power bills because of government subsidies are not paying their fair share to maintain the power grid. Mr. Goldwater and other advocates have struck back by calling the proposed fees a “solar tax,” and have pushed their message in ads on Fox News and the Drudge Report.

Similar conflicts are going on in California and Colorado, with many more to come. And as the issue pops up, conservatives are even joining forces with environmental groups. In Georgia, a Tea Party activist and the Sierra Club formed a “Green Tea Coalition.”

Read the whole article: The New York Times

Ga. agency seeks funding to track nuclear costs

by Ray Henry
ATLANTA (AP) 1/25/14 — Badly outnumbered regulators in Georgia want to hire two more employees to keep tabs on the $14 billion project to build a first-of-its-kind nuclear plant.

Southern Co. subsidiary Georgia Power says its share of the project to build Plant Vogtle (VOH’-gohl) is projected to go hundreds of millions of dollars over budget. Its 2.4 million customers will pay for the company’s building costs unless regulators force the utility to take losses on questionable spending.

Now the chairman of the Public Service Commission, Chuck Eaton, is asking state lawmakers for roughly $180,000 to fund two more employees to carefully track utility spending and construction efforts. The information those monitors gather will be crucial if regulators ultimately want to block Georgia Power from billing its customers for at least some of the project’s increasing cost.

Regulators are at a disadvantage when contending with Georgia Power, a monopoly that owns a 46 percent stake in the nuclear plant.

Read the whole article: SFGate

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Repeal Georgia Nuclear Tax