Oct. 29--American Municipal Power has been awarded a $29 million zero-interest Clean Renewable Energy Bond from the federal government to build a solar-powered energy plant in the Danville area.

The bond, financed through funds from the Energy Improvement and Extension Act of 2008 and the Recover Act, was one of 805 projects totaling $2.2 billion announced Tuesday by the U.S. Treasury Department. The energy bonds were issued to cooperative electric companies, like AMP, as well as gov-ernment agencies and public power providers, to obtain lower cost financing for clean energy development projects.

Danville Utilities is one AMP's 81 public power partners, and is participating in several of AMP's coal-powered and hydro-powered electricity generating projects.

Kent Carson, senior director of communications at AMP, said the bond will not cover the entire cost of the project, "but it will certainly help."

Carson described the project as a 6-megawatt, centralized photovoltaic plant that AMP is working on with Danville Utilities.

A location for the plant has not been finalized, but sites in Pittsylvania County will be considered, Carson said.

Carson said it is too early in the planning stages to announce when the plant might open.

Of the 33 energy bonds awarded to cooperative electric companies across the country, eight were awarded to AMP.

In addition to the solar plant in the Danville area, AMP also received energy bonds for one biomass and three hydropower plants in Kentucky; a hydropower plant in Ohio; a wind plant in Pennsylvania and a hydropower plant in West Virginia. The bonds total $143.7 million for the projects.

Hundreds of public power providers and governmental bodies across the country also were awarded the energy bonds, with California getting more than $742 million in CREBs for 582 projects, mostly for solar energy plants.

The AMP Danville project is the only project in Virginia to be awarded one of the energy bonds.

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