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Together We Save Kentucky
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East Kentucky Power Cooperative, its 16 owner-member co-ops and Frontier Housing regularly work together to help Kentucky residents such as Phyllis Kelly. When Phyllis and her husband Dewayne moved to Elliott County in 1979, five of their six children were still living at home. The family made do on Dewayne's take-home pay of $384 a month. Then Dewayne died in 2004. Phyllis found herself in an overwhelming situation. She was living with an adult daughter, a granddaughter and a great-granddaughter in an ancient, 12-foot-by-60-foot, single-wide mobile home that she learned too late had been through a flood before she bought it. The windows and doors leaked air, the electric furnace didn't keep the trailer warm in the winter and her window air conditioners couldn't cool it in the summer. The floor was caving in. Her electricity bills ran anywhere from $260 to $400 a month. Desperate, Kelly contacted Frontier Housing, a non-profit organization that provides affordable housing for low-income residents of Northeastern Kentucky. Frontier helped her find a low-cost USDA loan to buy a new, energy-efficient trailer. Now she's got shiny ENERGY STAR appliances and a heat pump that provides warmth in cold weather and central air conditioning when it's hot outside. Kelly pays $271.99 a month for the trailer, property taxes and insurance. Her electricity usage—and thus her energy bill—has dropped by half. Grayson RECC, one of EKPC's owner-member co-ops, helped Frontier judge whether Kelly needed a new home. After her trailer was delivered, Grayson sent a worker to conduct an air filtration test. "I'm tickled," Kelly said of her home. "Everything's a lot cheaper. Everything's energy-efficient." EKPC is a leader in renewable and energy-efficiency programs that are reliable, affordable and work for Kentucky. |
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