Renewable push not in the cards for Ga. Power

Oct 04 - Athens Banner-Herald

Fifty years from now, Georgia Power CEO Paul Bowers doesn't believe electrical power will be generated in any form other than the bread-and-butter sources the utility relies on now.

It'll still be nuclear, coal and natural gas that gives Georgians most of their electricity in 2062, Bowers predicted Wednesday, even if the company did sign on last week to triple its solar power use by 2017.

"Renewable (energy sources are) going to have a sliver," Bowers said of fuels to create electricity. "Is it going to be 2 or 4 percent? That's yet to be determined. Economics will drive that. But you always remember (that renewable energy is) an intermittent resource. It's not one you can depend on 100 percent of the time."

Lenn Chandler, a vice president at Georgia Power, added that there is still no efficient way to store electricity when it's not flowing.

The 210 megawatts being sought by the utility company using renewable sources would be enough for about 26,000 homes, or about a tenth of what the two new nuclear reactors at Plant Vogtle will produce.

Such green sources of energy include a minimal amount from hydroelectric power, solar energy and biomass energy, essentially the methane gas captured from landfills.

Bowers emphasized that he wanted economics to drive how Georgia Power generates electricity, with the aim of keeping costs lower for customers.

"What we don't want to do is have the (Public Service) Commission to say we want to be green and accept a higher price that puts upward pressure on everybody," Bowers said. "Our position is we're going to raise the price for everyone. Even if you didn't want solar, you would be paying for it because of the elevated costs."

Georgia Power customers have the option of buying blocks of green energy at the higher costs, Chandler said. Of the company's 2.4 million customers, he said less than 3,000 are buying into that program.

"That says to us that we don't need to go out and build a bunch of solar panels everywhere," Bowers said.

Further, Bowers said advances in coal-burning technology make it possible to use even the least-efficient types of coal by converting it into a synthetic natural gas, complete with the end result of a footprint similar to the amount of pollutants to come out of a natural gas plant.

--Follow government and business reporter Nick Coltrain at twitter.com/ncoltrain or on Facebook at facebook.com/NickColtrainABH.

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