Georgia is surging in solar power, but it is possible to do it wrong, as Florida’s NextEra is demonstrating in Brooks County, Georgia, with its proposal for a 150 MegaWatt solar farm on wooded wetlands.

Solar beat wind and natural gas for most new electric generation in 2016, for the first time, but far from the last. Georgia is the fastest growing U.S. solar market, and it’s time for the Sunshine State to catch up. Here are the solar basics everyone should know.

Solar Basics

Solar panels need no cooling or testing water, no fuel, no pipelines, and no eminent domain. They don’t leak, burn, or explode. They cost less and are faster to install than any other source of power, and their price keeps going down while they remain safer than any other power source.

• 2012-02-28: Economies of scale drive solar prices down, increasing deployment, which drives economies of scale…. Both models of panels (2005 and 2011) are around 15% efficiency, according to their specs. So it’s not efficiency that’s improved in commercial solar panels from 2005 to 2011: it’s price per watt.
• 2013-04-12: Electric utilities’ own think tank, Edison Electric Institute, warns them of “irreparable damages to revenues and growth prospects” if they don’t get on with solar power.
• 2013-06-18: WWALS board member Garry Gentry reads WWALS letter to Georgia PSC: Ask Georgia Power to conserve our water.

  

• 2014-03-05: According to Sabal Trail’s own figures, solar panels can generate just as much electricity on half the acreage of Sabal Trail’s fracked methane pipeline right of way, with no eminent domain, no drilling under rivers and through wetlands, and no risk to the Floridan Aquifer.
• 2017-03-02: The same money would buy a lot more electricity through solar power than that fracked methane pipeline could generate.
• 2015-05-12: New Georgia solar law enables solar financing, leaving only four states, Florida among them, without third party power purchase agreements.
• 2015-07-15: Georgia is the fastest-growing U.S. solar market
• 2016-11-08: Tens of millions of fossil fuel money couldn’t stop the people of Florida from supporting solar power: Florida voters say no to misleading solar amendment
• 2017-01-01: Solar power now employs more people than coal, oil, and natural gas combined: U.S. Department of Energy’s second annual U.S. Energy and Employment Report; see also Computerworld, Forbes, and EcoWatch.
• 2017-02-18: New solar up 95% in 2016, more installed than gas or wind
• 2017-02-20: U.S. electric power source projections: solar still most by 2023.
• 2015-07-14: By 2050 we can convert each and every U.S. state to sun, wind, and water power and nothing else. 100% renewable energy for U.S. by 2050
• 2013-08-25: Solar power will win like the Internet did.

Recent updates

The most recent posts may be found in the category Solar.

Here’s why the Sunshine State should stop wasting ratepayer dollars, private property, and our water on fossil fuel boondoggles and get on right now with solar power along with Georgia, Alabama, and all the other states:

• 2017-04-18: Suwannee BOCC approves Duke solar plant
• 2017-01-29: Quarterman: Sabal Trail pipeline already damaging our area; Tallahassee Democrat op-ed
• 2017-01-08: Solar power versus Sabal Trail –Suwannee Riverkeeper in VDT 2017-01-08
• Sabal Trail is overbuilt Florida gas infrastructure
• Informative forum against Sabal Trail in Citrus County —Harriet Heywood
• Stop Sabal Trail fracked gas pipeline; invest in solar —John S. Quarterman in Citrus County Chronicle 2016-12-25
• 2015-03-31: Historic solar financing bill started in GA PSC more than a year ago

  A summary of how WWALS helped make Georgia the fastest-growing solar market in the country, including by sending two board members to testify at the Georgia Public Service Commission in June 2013.

• Solar power versus Sabal Trail —Suwannee Riverkeeper in VDT 2017-01-08
• Mark Z. Jacobson’s Stanford University research group spells out how to power each and every U.S. state with sun, wind, and water power and nothing else by 2050, with the electric grid converted by 2050.
• 2013-06-18: Baseload fossil fuel and nuclear plants vs. solar power exponential growth are like telephone networks in 1993 when the Internet was already winning. The cloudy day doesn’t last for an entire month —John S. Quarterman @ GA PSC