Business partners, Bob Fairchild and David Coyte decided to recycle an unused small hydro electric plant upon the Kentucky River. The three water turbines on the lock and dam have been sitting idle for at least 6 years when Coyte and Fairchild decided to revive this renewable energy source.

The business partners can monitor the operation of the hydro turbines from their home computers, but occasionally need to make in person visits to clear debris. The small hydroelectric plant was built in 1928 and is called the Mother Ann Lee Hydroelectric Station.

This station is the only low impact hydroelectric plant in as it “adequately protects river flows, water quality, aquatic life and other factors as certified by the Low Impact Hydropower Institute, an independent non-profit in Maine.”

Coyte and Fairchild have combined recycling with small hydro to provide very clean electricity to the local Kentucky residents. One has to wonder how many other abandoned hydro electric plants around the U. S. could also use a makeover and a kick start to help other communities go a little greener.

The new Yahoo data center could start building as early as fall 2009 and be completed in January 2011. The new east coast data center would mean 125 new high tech jobs and an average pay level of $65,000 per year.

New York’s Governor David Paterson and the New York Power Authority have agreed to sell Yahoo 10 MW of cheap hydropower for the initial phase of construction. In the second phase of construction of the $150 million data center starting in the Spring of 2012, Yahoo will be sold an additional 5 MW of hydropower.

Now, the California-based Yahoo has already taken measures to reduce its carbon footprint and has set up the Yahoo! Green page to help consumers do the same. With the addition of hydropower from New York, Yahoo is once again competing with Google on the green front as well as the search front.

Now, really, hydroelectric power is not only just a bunch of big ass dams such as the Hoover behemoth clogging up our rivers, causing water stagnation and yes, delivering power. There is another type of hydroelectric power called “run of the river” that is considered to be a greener alternative in that it goes with the flow, so to speak, of the body of water.

These run of the river hydroelectric power stations do not impede fish migration or cause water stagnation. Most of the underwater turbines go unnoticed by the general population.

In West Virginia, the New Martinsville Hydroelectric Plant is explained like this, “…the power producing units are like a seven-story light bulb turned on its side which allows the water to flow straight. Each has a giant three-bladed propeller rotating around the neck with turbine generators attached to the propeller. They are 21 feet below the surface of the water. At the time they were built, they were among the largest in the world.”

Just as wind turbines use air currents to turn generators to produce electricity so do submerged run of the river turbines use water to do the same. They go with the flow and unlike the Three Gorges Dam in China, you don’t have to evacuate thousand of people from the manmade flood area to accommodate the turbines.

A couple of weeks ago China opened up its third largest hydropower station in the country. The Longtan hydropower station is still in the first phase and will generate around 700 megawatts of power using 7 generators.

When the second and third phases of construction are completed, the Longtan station will have an expected total output of 6.3 gigawatts of power. Around 80,000 residents so far have been relocated to accommodate this new power plant.

And, besides its large hydropower stations in Longtan, Datang and Xiluodu, China also gets a significant portion of its electricity from small, rural micro-hydro stations. In 2008, there were 50,000 such micro-hydro stations in China supplying one-quarter of the population with electricity.

Because China’s population is listed at 1.3 billion and the U. S. population at slightly over 300 million, this means that China’s rural micro-hydro stations last year supplied a population the size of the entire U. S. with electricity.