Off to a good start with new hydro capacity in Kentucky

On Friday, I received a great e-mail which is hopefully a good sign of the way things could be in 2009 -- the general misery of the financial down cycle could be cheered up by the growth of renewables that create a vibrant new "green industry" in the U.S.



The e-mail was from David Brown Kinloch, senior partner of the Mother Ann Lee hydro plant on the Kentucky River, and the content of the e-mail message was simple: the plant now has the third turbine (out of three total) up and running, with capacity to generate approximately 8,000 megawatt hours of pure, low-impact hydro power per year. The three partners of the Mother Ann Lee hydro plant do almost all of the refurbishment work, and they have been working very hard since 2005 to get the plant back up to full capacity. Until they got turbine #1 running again this week, it had been 17 years since it last generated electricity.



Please visit the Mother Ann Lee website for the full story: http://www.kyhydropower.com/


And if you are a KU or LG&E customer, please consider buying Green Energy to support Mother Ann Lee and contribute to the growth of other hydro on the Kentucky River: www.eon-us.com/green. This is the green energy program that I launched in 2007, and currently manage, and I couldn't be more proud of the efforts among my team members and customers to build this program to the point that it is fully subscribing the Renewable Energy Credits (RECs) being generated from Mother Ann Lee.



The other great recent news from Kinloch is that he has filed plans with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) for two more hydro plants on the Kentucky River.



Here's to green growth in '09,



CW