It all started with bombs. During the First World War, the federal government built two nitrate plants at Muscle Shoals, Alabama, for making explosives. Wilson Dam was built to supply electricity to these plants. After the war ended, there was disagreement over what to do with the site. Industrialists like Henry Ford envisioned the rise [...]
Do you want to invest in solar, but you can’t? Maybe your roof doesn’t point south, or it’s shaded most of the time. Maybe you rent. Maybe you just can’t come up with the up-front cost of a solar system. Well, if your local distributor is Duck River EMC, all those problems are solved! Duck [...]
Clean Energy. We’re all for it. In fact we’re the Southern Alliance for it. But what is it? I’m not talking about the “clean” part. That one word deserves its own essay. I’m talking about the “energy” part. We all have some idea about what energy is. We all pay utility bills. What we’re paying [...]
Members of Volunteer Energy Cooperative should be pleased with their efforts, as their Cooperative is leading the way on energy efficiency among the power distributors served by TVA. Late last year VEC, at the urging of their members, sent a letter to the Tennessee Valley Authority supporting a goal to reduce residential load by 1% with energy [...]
If you know someone who still hasn’t bought into the idea of anthropogenic climate change, Chasing Ice, a documentary that reveals stunning images of glaciers retreating, could serve as a powerful educational tool. The subject of Chasing Ice, James Balog, is a long-time photographer who has explored the relationship between man and nature. The impetus [...]
Simon Mahan, SACE’s Renewable Energy Manager, contributed to this blog. The plains have corn, but here in the south, we have rice. Both grains have the potential to serve a role in the 21stCentury’s electrical grid. A few weeks ago, rice farmers and other interested stakeholders met in Marked Tree, Arkansas, population 3,100, to talk [...]
On the morning of January 1, 2013, the Senate passed the controversial fiscal cliff bill and sent it to the House of Representatives. That afternoon, while all eyes were on the House, Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, managed to unblock a logjam of presidential nominations. At 5:03 p.m., in front of an empty [...]
Remember when coal was king? Just a few years ago the consensus was that coal was cheap and abundant and would remain that way for the foreseeable future. Today, though, coal prices are increasing and becoming more volatile. Perhaps more important to us here in the Valley, TVA’s existing fleet of coal plants will soon [...]
When anyone moves into a new place, they start to think about the changes they want to make in their new home. The Southern Alliance for Clean Energy moved into our new home over a year and a half ago. Like anyone else we started to think about the changes we wanted to make. Of [...]
