Enviros challenge TVA’s long-term utility contracts

UTILITIES: Three environmental groups challenge the legality of the Tennessee Valley Authority’s rolling 20-year contracts in a courtroom in Memphis, Tennessee, where the local utility is considering breaking with the TVA. (Commercial Appeal)

ALSO:
• Georgia regulators enter the final weeks of consideration in Georgia Power’s months-long rate case, which might be a prelude to more rate hike requests in 2023. (Georgia Recorder)
• Duke Energy signs a deal to use Amazon Web Services to predict its power needs as the utility aims to strengthen its grid and transition to carbon-free energy. (Wall Street Journal, subscription)

SOLAR:
• Alabama school officials consider how to spend more than $43 million in new tax revenue projected to be generated by a planned solar panel module manufacturing facility. (Decatur Daily)
• Tennessee joins seven other states in requesting five companies suspend payments and interest for customers who financed a solar energy system from Pink Energy but haven’t yet received a working system. (WKRN)
• Florida Power & Light plans a fourth 75 MW solar farm in a Florida county. (NorthEscambia.com)
• Duke Energy acquires a 100 MW solar farm in Mississippi. (news release)

ELECTRIC VEHICLES: Tennessee officials tout the construction of a network of fast chargers as integral to the state’s emergence as an electric vehicle manufacturing powerhouse. (Chattanooga Times Free Press)

WIND: Campbell Soup enters a purchase power agreement to source renewable energy from a 115 MW Oklahoma wind farm. (news release)

COAL: Dominion Energy claims a largely coal-fired plant in southwestern Virginia remains economically viable, but critics say Dominion’s report fails to justify its claimed benefits. (Virginia Mercury)

OIL & GAS:
• Texas regulators investigate a 5.4 magnitude earthquake that’s been blamed in part on increased wastewater disposal as fracking increases in the Permian Basin. (Texas Public Radio)
• West Virginia airport officials consider a gas company’s proposal to build a natural gas-fired microgrid on the airport’s campus. (WV News)

GEOTHERMAL: Louisville, Kentucky’s airport prepares to begin operating a geothermal energy system that will reduce its carbon footprint by 80%. (WDRB)

NUCLEAR: Experts say a small modular nuclear reactor could be built in southwestern Virginia, but it would take about a decade and depend on regulatory approvals. (Cardinal News)

GRID: Duke Energy builds a new substation as part of $30 million of grid upgrades in North Carolina. (WFAE)

OVERSIGHT: Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin appoints a Northern Virginia lawyer to a state solar and battery storage board. (Sun Gazette)

POLITICS: Experts say U.S. Joe Manchin’s permitting reform bill seems unlikely to pass in Congress’ lame-duck session, with a tight calendar and the legislation’s forced completion of the Mountain Valley Pipeline still a sticking point. (States Newsroom)

COMMENTARY:
• North Carolina regulators should reject Duke Energy’s proposed solar tariff, which would reduce payments for power from customer-owned rooftop systems, writes a retired engineering professor. (Asheville Citizen-Times)
• Republican U.S. Senate candidate Herschel Walker’s advocacy for ​“gas guzzlers” and dismissal of electric vehicles displays ignorance of Georgia’s standing as a burgeoning EV manufacturing hub, writes a columnist. (Savannah Morning News)
• Ford’s engagement with the Tennessee communities around its planned BlueOval City electric vehicle and battery factories are setting a standard that other EV companies like Tesla might be wise to emulate, an EV journalist writes. (CleanTechnica)