Georgia Power and its parent Southern Company are trying to keep open options for new types of electricity generation, but political concerns hover in the background.
The company is seeking approval from the Georgia Public Service Commission for its latest 20-year plan, approval required every three years under state law. The company is to look at projections for customer demand for power, generation costs and environmental restrictions as it evaluates which power source to bet on and which to de-emphasize.
This new plan de-emphasizes coal by shuttering a handful of coal-fired units, even giving one older coal plant away so the neighboring Georgia Ports Authority can use the land for economic development. This builds on 15 coal units shut down in the last plan.
Those are uncontroversial decisions. The politics comes in what new generation to focus on going forward, natural gas, nuclear, solar, wind, biomass or what.
Georgia Power’s executive in charge of energy planning, Alison Chiock, said the company’s intention is to compare the various sources on an economic basis.
“By having each of the technologies compete, we think that brings the best value to our customers,” she said.
But the policymakers aren’t immune from public opinion.
Take nuclear, for instance. The plan revealed that the company has bought land in Stewart County where it could locate a nuclear power plant and withdraw water for cooling from the nearby Chattahoochee River. It hasn’t decided if this is the way it wants to go, but it is asking the commission for permission to spend money evaluating the site and the viability of added nuclear generation.
That triggered protests from environmentalists who say there isn’t enough water in the river during droughts. Opponents of nuclear energy also are speaking up.
Another nuclear option for the company is what the industry calls small modular reactors. These can be built in factories and trucked to a site about the size of a Walmart and its parking lot, making them much cheaper. They use much less water for cooling and generate significantly less waste in their spent fuel. And they can be quickly turned on and off, making it possible to pair them with solar or wind generation which is intermittent according to Mother Nature’s whims.
“When you look at small modular reactors from this view, you ask why aren’t we building them already?” asked Frank Saunders, vice president with Canada-based Bruce Power during the international nuclear-construction summit hosted in Atlanta recently by Nuclear Energy Insider.
One reason is the perception of nuclear energy, according to Gary Schwendiman, a former professor and author of The Future of Clean Energy.
Google images of “nuclear power,” and half will be photos of bombs, he said.
“To succeed, this technology must overcome the perception held by the public and news media, and you in the industry have to do the educating,” he told executives at the summit.
Even among renewables, politics makes the decision tricky.
A biomass plant in Thomaston, Ga., is lobbying the Public Service Commission to require Georgia Power use more biomass as part of its 525 megawatts of new renewable generation.
On the other hand, Commissioner Tim Echols argues that using wind generated in western states to fill the renewable portion does nothing to create jobs in Georgia. He is pushing for more solar.
“Are you aware of the value of the large solar arrays in South Georgia to those counties,” he asked in Monday’s hearing.
As the political considerations swirl, the engineers, accountants and financial experts that run Georgia Power say the most straightforward way to make the decision is economics, letting the numbers speak for themselves.
As the commission hears many hours of testimony in the coming month before they vote, they’ll have to weigh all of those considerations – and the challengers Echols is facing in this year’s re-election effort.
