Tennessee plans to market its wind-powered renewable energy program

KNOXVILLE, TENNESSEE - Now that TVA's 15 new wind turbines are up and running high atop Buffalo Mountain, the agency plans a new marketing campaign to get customers to sign up for its renewable energy program.

The new turbines were built next to three turbines TVA already runs on the Anderson County mountain near Oliver Springs, increasing the total power that can be produced to 29 megawatts, enough to power 3,000 homes.

Green Power Switch is a program using electricity generated from the wind turbines, 15 sites with solar panels that produce electricity throughout the Tennessee Valley and from methane gas produced at the Allen Fossil Plant in Memphis.

TVA spokesman Gil Francis said the federal utility's marketing program being launched in April will include radio ads over two months in the region's major markets, including Knoxville, Nashville, Chattanooga, Johnson City, Memphis and Huntsville, Ala.

In addition, TVA will send direct mail pieces to 160,000 households in those major markets.

Finally, TVA distributors of power will include a flier with electric bills to encourage customers to sign up for the Green Power program.

"One of the most important parts of this expansion of the program is it will allow more customers in the TVA region the option of supporting renewable energy," TVA Director Skila Harris said Wednesday. "As of last month, more than 7,000 residential customers participated in the Green Power Switch program and we had 350 business customers. So this is going to allow even more people to support Green Power."

Among TVA's 158 power distributors, 73 are participating in the program, which customers sign up for through their distributors.

Green power is sold in 150 kilowatt-hour blocks of electricity to residential, business and industrial customers. For residences, each block costs $4 above the regular rate of electricity. For businesses and industries, the cost depends on annual electricity use and has a minimum of $20 above the regular rate of electricity.

TVA spokesman John Moulton said the agency has not yet calculated the costs of the marketing campaign.

Darrin Rhines, Knoxville Utilities Board business analyst, said TVA determined the average monthly electricity consumed by a residential customer in the Tennessee Valley to be 1,250 kilowatt hours. TVA took 12 percent of that number to come up with a 150 kilowatt-hour block.

The huge wind turbines, each as tall as a 26-story building, are 265 feet tall and have blades 135 feet long.

They were built by Invenergy LLC of Chicago at a cost of $30 million and TVA has a 20-year, $60 million agreement with the company to purchase power from the windmills.

TVA owns the three original, slightly smaller turbines built by Enxco of Palms Springs, Calf.

KUB joined the program in 2000 to give its customers more choices.

"We saw that it was a good opportunity for our customers who want to improve air quality," Rhines said. "It improves air quality because you're not producing pollution from the coal-fired plants. We are about choice. We thought some of our customers would want it."

Out of KUB's 183,000 customers, 1,915 have joined the Green Power program, according to Rhines.

Harris expects the addition of the 15 wind turbines to generate more interest in the program.

"People who are interested care enough to pay a little more to support the program," she said.

The 15 new turbines were completed last November. The original three were built in 2000.