My Father and Solar Power in Lowndes County

My father was a civil servant. He had to pass a civil service exam to become an employee of the City of Detroit to go to work for the Public Lighting Commission, a municipal entity that was tasked with providing electricity to light the city's street lights. He was a trained engineer, who's last job was to run a power plant. Here's a photo of Mistersky Power Plant that my father ran a shift overseeing electrical production (It had six smokestacks when I was growing up and it burned coal. They changed to gas in the early seventies.).

My father made less than his private sector peers for working in the public sector. He traded it off for the security of knowing that if he did his job, he was assured of a job. My father did his job well. He was able to live the American Dream as one who had it pretty rough during the Depression. He was able to retire at sixty two with a decent pension. Even though it was barely five years later when he passed away, I was glad that he'd had that time to do pretty much whatever he wanted.

What's all that have to do with Lowndes County, Georgia? Right now, all the people and businesses and institutions of Lowndes County are dependent on Georgia Power to provide their electricity. If you'll just let your mind remember what it's like when the power goes out, you can see what part Georgia Power plays in our lives. Our lives and civilization literally run on electricity, and without it, just like pulling the plug, our lives come to an abrupt halt. How secure do you feel knowing that your entire lifestyle relies on some faceless corporation that sees Lowndes County as some miniscule piece in their grand scheme of things, while they extract tens of millions of dollars a month from us?

Why should we people of Lowndes County have to be dependent upon some giant corporation that couldn't care less about us here beyond what fees they can extract, when we can be self-sufficient in electrical production if we wanted to be? We could probably not just be self-sufficient, but actually a net exporter of electricity. Econ 101 taught me, the way to wealth is to produce something. Just like the City of Detroit, the City of Valdosta , or the County of Lowndes, could come together and produce our own electrical energy for ourselves, and it would be cheaper and more secure than if we simply trust in Georgia Power.

Unfortunately, an archaic Georgia state law from 1973 stands in the way of a municipal entity, that is, the citizens of some city, attempting to provide their own power. I assume it applies to a county effort. I don't know what your idea of freedom is, but being subject to the whims of Georgia Power is not my idea. Why isn't this considered tyranny?