Tea Party Targeting Southern Co. Power Monopoly

Tea party activists in Georgia are taking what appears to be a rare stand on energy, challenging a power utility's reluctance to increase solar energy and questioning the ballooning costs of building a nuclear power plant.

The Atlanta Tea Party's action is relatively unusual among loosely linked tea party organizations nationally.

Other tea party groups have condemned the adoption of "smart" utility meters that transmit information about customer usage, due to concerns that they would intrude on customers' privacy. Or they have broadly backed less reliance on foreign energy.

But relatively few have endorsed so specific an energy platform in their own backyards, much less promised to campaign on it.