New Opportunities in Solar Energy
Kentucky River Properties currently has over 15,000 acres of reclaimed surface mine lands scattered throughout its holdings in Eastern Kentucky. The company is in the process of undergoing an aggressive internal evaluation to determine the highest and best use for this reclaimed land, which, to this point, has only been utilized for small hay and pastureland operations.
KRP continues to pursue the development for solar energy production on our reclaimed mine sites and have recently leased four sites to Tenaska Solar Holdings for the installation of solar arrays. Invenergy made the decision to concentrate their efforts in other regions, but still work with KRP on our Freedom Energy properties in Indiana. KRP is hopeful that our agreement with Tenaska will produce the first solar array project within our region.
The company is also discussing additional sites with other development companies. Solar energy is radiant light and heat from the sun that is harnessed using a range of ever-evolving technologies in the current solar panel arrays.
It is an important source of renewable energy and its technologies are broadly characterized as either passive solar or active solar depending on how they capture and distribute solar energy or convert it into solar power.
Active solar techniques include the use of photovoltaic systems, concentrated solar power and solar water heating to harness the energy. The large magnitude of solar energy available makes it a highly appealing source of electricity.
