By Keith Johnston and Katie Ottenweller
Southern Environmental Law Center
Alabama Power Company is notably absent from the growing ranks of utilities across the South that are now investing in affordable solar power to capture cost savings for customers. Those ranks include sister companies Georgia Power, Mississippi Power and Gulf Power, which makes Alabama Power’s absence all the more inexplicable.
Today the price of solar panels is a tenth of what it was a decade ago. Buying power from large solar farms is now cheaper than utilities’ cost to generate power using traditional power plants, meaning that investing in solar power is a no-brainer – it produces significant savings for customers. This has a lot to do with how solar systems generate electricity – unsurprisingly, solar panels are at their most productive on hot, sunny days when fossil electricity is at its most expensive. As a fuel-free resource, solar decreases the cost of energy, and those savings are greatest during peak demand.
Solar resources also help avoid or defer the need for costly new power plants and transmission line upgrades. And when utilities run their fossil fuel-fired plants for fewer hours because a greater share of energy is coming from solar resources, this produces less pollution. Homegrown solar power also puts boots on the roof in our communities, creating good-paying, local jobs that can’t be outsourced.
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