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Monday, March 9, 2009
News You, too, can create renewable energy
Posted By Rhiannon Fionn-Bowman on Mon, Mar 9, 2009 at 9:01 AM
North Carolina entrepreneurs are being awarded lucrative grants, looking forward to next year's tax credits and hoping their idea will be the one that helps "meet the state's renewable-energy mandate, the first in the Southeast when legislators approved it in 2007."
Even homeowners are creating renewable energy, able to "sell renewable-energy “credits” to N.C. GreenPower, a nonprofit group."
For all the headaches in running a small hydroelectric power plant, Allen Haneline doesn't regret joining North Carolina's ranks of minor energy moguls.“What it takes,” he said, “is someone who loves the outdoors and likes to get wet. You get wet about every day.”
Beaver-gnawed sticks float down the Lower Little River northeast of Hickory and wrap around Haneline's circa-1919 turbines, the guts of a plant he bought three years ago. “You can literally see the kilowatts fall,” he said, sniffling after a recent repair.
As owner, operator and chief mechanic, he dons waders, descends into a room below the dam that leaks water with the force of a fire hose, and sets to work. Cleared of debris, the turbines whirl again and pollution-free electricity races off to Duke Energy's lines.
Haneline is among a rising number of N.C. entrepreneurs hoping to wrestle energy – and profits – from the sun, wind, water and organic wastes.
Read the rest of this Charlotte Observer article here.
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