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Puling power from waste: company generating new ways to get energy.

Article Excerpt
I Power Energy Systems isn't a coal-burning electric utility's worst nightmare. Not yet, anyway.

For now, the Remy International spin-off that makes natural-gas-powered electric generators that are the primary power source of corporate and college campuses is still a novelty in Indiana. After all, coal is still a cheaper source of electricity than is natural gas.

But while I Power chisels away at the market share of high-cost electric utilities on the coasts and overseas, it soon may make a more compelling business case here in cheap-coal country. It is developing applications for electric generators that burn biogas from sources ranging from garbage to ground-up corn.

I Power within days will place one of its SUV-size power plants at the South Side Landfill, on Kentucky Avenue, where it will burn methane from buried trash, generating enough electricity to serve at least eight average-size homes. In this case, the electricity will power the landfill's operations.

I Power units also will burn methane produced from corn stillage, a waste product from ethanol refineries that are sprouting in the state like spring dandelions. The Anderson firm is even looking at ways to burn the gases that form at municipal water treatment plants.

"We still need to start weaning ourselves from coal, and we're ready to serve," said Mike Hudson, chairman and CEO of I Power, uttering what would be blasphemy in some parts of southwest Indiana's bituminous country.

Alternative energy has been the ruin of many an entrepreneur...