ProgressOhio

Even though the Amish have a prohibition on using electricity supplied by the power company, they do allow home-grown energy to power their businesses. The Miller family in Adams county in southern Ohio uses energy from windmills and solar collectors to run lights and the cash register in their family business:

Read the article in Saturday's Cincinnati Enquirer

Electricity generated in the outside world and brought into the Amish community via power lines is generally forbidden. Power lines running into an Amish home or business would be too direct a connection to the outside world for a people who believe in the Biblical injunction in II Corinthians 6:17: "Come out from among them and be separate, sayeth the Lord."

But generating power for themselves - especially in a family business, where the family members come together for a common purpose, is more than acceptable.

In other Alternative Energy news, Columbus-based American Electric Power has announced that two of its subsidiaries - one based in Michigan and one in West Virginia - will purchace electricity from a wind farm in Indiana. The Fowler Ridge Wind Farm in Benton County, Indiana is scheduled to be on-line by the end of 2008:

North American Windpower article

AEP's Appalachian Power and Indiana Michigan Power utility units each signed a 20-year agreement to purchase 100 MW of wind energy from the Fowler Ridge Wind Farm being developed in Benton County (and part of Tippecanoe County), Indiana, according to AEP. The Fowler Ridge Wind Farm is expected to be online by the end of 2008.

Hopefully, Ohioans will soon be able to purchase green energy as well.