Category: Climate Change
Dave Williams
Staff Writer – Atlanta Business Chronicle
Georgia Power Co. will begin construction soon on a project that will double the generating capacity of the utility’s solar plant in Dalton, Ga., the company announced Thursday. The first phase of the plant went on line last March and is operating with a capacity of 350 kilowatts. Construction of the second phase, due to be completed in about two months, will bring the plant up to 700 kilowatts, on its way to a full capacity of 1 megawatt of electricity. One megawatt of solar photovoltaic panels produces enough energy to power about 135 homes.
The plant is being constructed by United Renewable Energy LLC of Alpharetta, Ga., under a 25-year wholesale power purchasing agreement Dalton Utilities signed with Georgia Power in January of last year.
Dalton Utilities serves 77,000 customers in five Northwest Georgia counties.
Georgia Power is a unit of Atlanta-based Southern Co . (NYSE: SO).
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PSC member touts alternative fuels
Charles Oliver
charlesoliver@daltoncitizen.com
Tim Echols, a member of Georgia’s Public Service Commission (PSC), lauded several Dalton companies Monday for their push to use more solar power.
The PSC regulates state utilities, and Echols told the Kiwanis Club of Dalton that the state could face an electricity shortage over the next few years because utilities will be closing down some coal-fired plants because they will be too expensive to run under new U.S. Environmental Protection Agency rules.
by Mariann Martin DALTON, Ga. — Gray skies and the occasional rain shower may have put a damper on production Friday, but the dreary weather didn’t stop solar energy proponents from predicting a sunny future for Dalton. “There is no other place in Georgia where you can take a 10-mile tour and see this kind of installation of solar energy,” Bill Silva, the president of United Renewable Energy, told about 50 people gathered in southern Whitfield County.
United Renewable Energy, which has installed many of Dalton’s solar energy sites, hosted a tour for Dalton leaders, business owners from across the state and officials involved in promoting renewable energy in Georgia.
The tour included a rooftop solar array at USFloors, a newly installed array on top of a landfill at Textile Rubber and Chemical Co., Dalton Utilities’ solar system and a solar tracking panel at IVC. (more…)
For the PV industry, Georgia is a tough nut to crack. Click to read full article
Partly Sunny In Georgia
Jerry Grillo. Published in Georgia Trend Magazine July 2011
The state’s solar industry is growing steadily, but slowly, as the national industry explodes.
The sun preceded humans by four billion years, give or take an eon, and in another billion years it will consume us, if we don’t kill ourselves first or we somehow avoid being dispatched by plague, meteors, aliens or some other misfortune.
Another billion years. By then, if not a little sooner, Georgia surely will have figured out how to better leverage the golden opportunity that rises in the East every day. Or so it is hoped by this state’s growing legion of solar energy advocates.
“It could take many, many years, but we will get there,” says Lee Peterson, senior manager for Reznick Group’s national tax practice in its Atlanta office, where he has served as an advisor in renewable energy projects across the U.S. valued at more than $2.4 billion – but only a tiny portion in Georgia. (more…)