WE SPECIALIZE IN HYDROELECTRIC
In 1987 Lee built his own 500KW hydro plant. It is run of the river on a stream that goes underground a good portion of the year. This plant supplies power for 250 average American homes during the heavy run-off period from May through July. This is some of the cleanest power produced in the world and should be the first consideration when a site is available.
There is a pair of hydro plants near Lee's plant that belong to the Town of Philipsburg. We oversee the ongoing maintenance on these plants that supply power to the town for the school and the traffic lights. these are also very environmentally sound sources of power as they come from the outlet of a high mountain lake and are the pipelines carrying the drinking water to the town which would be there anyway. This means the environmental impact is nearly zero.
After 9/11/01, the insurance for these small plants tripled. At the same time, the government guaranteed that the taxpayers would subsidize the insurance of the high-rise buildings in places like New York. When you sell power on the wholesale market, with an avoided cost rate that hasn't been updated in several years, a hit like that can eat up all your profit and it doesn't seem a well placed hit. Distributed generation from qualified facilities is the solution, not the problem. The mistakes come when they qualify coal plants.