Come back and expand on this one —Valdosta Mayor John Fretti

Yes, let's celebrate Hannah Solar and this solar array! But why do people have to keep gilding the lily and claiming it's the largest in the state when it wasn't even back at groundbreaking? So if Valdosta Mayor John Fretti and County Commissioner Crawford Powell have agreed to expand this solar array if somebody leapfrogs it, time to get cracking! It was already leapfrogged before it was built.

After lauding his class of Leadership Lowndes over others, Mayor Fretti complimented various local organizations and said:

...not only that it has a good quality of life, it has the infrastructure that is needed for industrial recruitment, but that you will be successful when you locate in Valdosta-Lowndes County, and I think Hannah Solar is evidence of that.

All true, and note which comes first: "a good quality of life."

Mayor Fretti quoted the first law of thermodynamics (conservation and conservation of energy) and remarked:

But now we have some energy sources in our area that we can take advantage of. Unfortunately we don't have an ocean for tidal power. Unfortunately we don't have geothermal as much as other areas of the country.

We do have sunlight. Certainly not as much as some areas of the country, but we have an abundance enough that we could put out what is currently the largest array in the state of Georgia.

That's all good stuff, except this wasn't the biggest solar array in the state even the last time Mayor Fretti stood on the same spot and said the same thing.

Maybe he (and everyone) should double-check what VLCIA tells him.

Brad Lofton knew

about the larger solar array in Dalton, Georgia back in January, because I told him. Lofton was still going around bragging about it in February. Apparently Col. Ricketts hasn't bothered to tell Mayor Fretti even though Lofton is gone.

And, truthfully, I think Crawford and I have talked, if somebody makes a larger array, we hope to come back and expand on this one, because we're a little competitive and we like to be the largest in Valdosta.

Time to get cracking on making the local solar array larger!

But we can convert to solar into an alternative energy source and put it on the grid for our electric utilities to have a choice, a better choice for alternative electricity.

We don't have a river next to us either for hydroelectric, so we use what we have. And as Mr. Copeland said, perhaps we can figure out how to convert these gnats into energy; we have a lot of those.

We're proud that our area was the first are to recognize this, to recognize that Hannah Solar had a product that would work here, and to brag that we are the first and largest solar array in the state of Georgia.

It may be the first large array Hannah Solar has done, but I heard Pete Marte of Hannah Solar having to correct what WCTV wrote down that Mayor Fretti said about this being the largest array in the state. Everybody knows that's not true, except people who believe what VLCIA tells them.

It looks and appears like it's a win for everyone, and we're glad for that.

Yes, it is a win for everyone. And we should celebrate that.

But why make everyone look like doofuses by repeating something that wasn't true months ago?

Here's the video:

come back and expand on this one —Valdosta Mayor John Fretti
Commissioning Ceremony,
Wiregrass Solar, Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority (VLCIA),
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 12 May 2011.
Videos by John S. Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.

-jsq

Comments

[Leigh Touchton]

Thank you for clarifying about the size of the solar array, Mr. Quarterman. When Mayor Fretti said that I wondered what he was talking about. Pete Marte said they could easily have built one ten times as large as this one. Pete Marte also told me the array is warranted for at least 25 years, these panels are virtually maintenance free.