Georgia’s solar forecast: partly sunny

– June 21, 2023 –

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Sunny days for big solar

Georgia ranks third among Southeastern states — behind Florida and North Carolina — for total solar production and for watts produced per customer, according to a new report from the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy. The vast majority of those sun-powered kilowatts in Georgia are coming from utility-scale solar, big fields of ground-mounted solar panels at military installations and across farmland in South Georgia. Rooftop solar in the Peach State still lags because Georgia Power and the electric cooperatives pay poorly for solar exports to the grid, making it difficult for homeowners to recoup their investment.

Looking bright: Georgia is projected to surpass North Carolina in total megawatts of installed solar by 2025.

Partly cloudy: Despite a reinstated federal tax credit of 30% on solar panels installed on residences and businesses, SACE predicts rooftop solar will remain a small contributor in Georgia and the market will continue to struggle. That’s because the Georgia Public Service Commission failed to reinstate “monthly netting” – a form of net metering – during Georgia Power’s planning process and subsequent rate case last year. The PSC instead imposed a temporary increase in compensation of 4 cents per kWh above Georgia Power’s wholesale avoided cost.

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Defunct spaceport still a drain

It’s been more than a year since Camden County voters rejected plans for a county-led rocket launch facility called Spaceport Camden. The precedent-setting referendum was held March 8, 2022, and the state Supreme Court upheld the voters’ decision in February of this year, but as the Georgia Recorder’s Stanley Dunlap reports, Camden keeps spending tax money on the defunct project.

Where’s the money still going? Mainly to lawyers. The spaceport tab was already more than $12 million last year, but the county continues to rack up legal fees for three spaceport-related lawsuits. Camden is suing chemical giant Union Carbide to recoup the millions it spent on an option to purchase the spaceport site. It’s not going well for Camden. The county has claimed alternately that the company breached its contract but also that the contract was not valid. The county also intervened in the Federal Aviation Administration’s defense against the Little Cumberland Homes Association and several environmental groups who are suing over the FAA’s issuance of a spaceport operator’s license to Camden. And there’s the matter of which spaceport records should be available to the public. One Hundred Miles sued to get a better look at previously hidden documents and while the county has been ordered to release some of them, the suit continues.

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PSC elections

A U.S. Supreme Court ruling upholding voting rights in Alabama could influence how Georgia votes for its utility regulators, Marisa Mecke reports in the Savannah Morning News. The high court found that Congressional map Alabama used for last year’s midterm elections likely violated the Voting Rights Act by minimizing the power of Black voters. A federal court previously found that the way Georgia conducts at-large elections for its five Public Service Commissioners similarly disenfranchises Black voters. The state appealed that decision in a case heard in December.

In the meantime, two PSC elections scheduled for November were delayed. Commssioners Tim Echols and Fitz Johnson continue to serve in their positions until a decision is reached and a new election scheduled.

Brionté McCorkle, the executive director of Georgia Conservation Voters and a plaintiff in the original federal case is eager for a decision.

“We’re six months past the appeal hearing, and the Public Service Commission is voting to approve every power bill increase they can,” she said in a prepared statement.

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Also noted

• Georgia Power on Friday filed a report with the Securities and Exchange Commission to tell shareholders about yet another delay in bringing the Unit 3 nuclear reactor online. The company “identified, and is in the process of remediating, a degraded hydrogen seal in the main generator and has started the planned maintenance outage.” The latest setback pushes from this month to next the in-service date of the first of the two new reactors at Vogtle near Augusta. Unit 3 long ago missed its initial deadline of April 1, 2016.

• The eastern Atlantic — that’s the part of the ocean nearer to Africa — is looking “very busy for mid-June,” the National Hurricane Center noted Monday. Less than a month into hurricane season, they’re watching two tropical systems spinning up. Meteorologists are blaming the early tropical activity on sea surface temperatures that are up to 5 degrees higher than normal, as the Washington Post reports. The Lesser Antilles, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands are on alert for Bret’s effects later this week.

• Earlier this month Georgia regulators reversed course on the idea of allowing biomass plants to burn scrap tires for electricity. Clean energy advocates applauded the five-member board’s unanimous vote, as Stanley Dunlap reports in the Georgia Recorder.

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