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)

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Mason has worked as a journalist since 2001, covering Appalachian communities and the issues that affect them. He compiles the Southeast Energy News digest. Mason previously worked as a wildlife biologist before moving into journalism by freelancing at Coast Weekly in Monterey, California, before taking an internship in 2001 at High Country News. He wrote for the Enterprise Mountaineer in western North Carolina and the Roanoke Times in western Virginia before going freelance in 2012. His work has appeared in Southerly, Daily Yonder, Mother Jones, Huffington Post, WVPB’s Inside Appalachia and elsewhere. Mason was born and raised in Clifton Forge, Virginia, and now lives with his family and a small herd of goats in Floyd County, Virginia.