An Elizabethtown-based company with manufacturing facilities in Morgantown will receive a $750,000 state investment to further develop alternative energy.

Wind Energy was among seven companies benefiting from $1.15 million awarded this week from Kentucky New Energy Ventures Fund.

Wind Energy is actually receiving an equity investment, which must be matched dollar for dollar by the company. It will manufacture wind turbines at the Morgantown facility and has already completed one that will be installed in Weslaco, Texas, according to Sara Bolton, communications director for the company.

Currently, there are 14 to 16 people employed at the Morgantown facility; Bolton said she is not sure when other production runs will be made.

Butler County Judge-Executive David Fields said that late last month crews from Morgantown were ready to take the working prototype to Texas, but then the hurricane hit “and they didn’t get to set it up. I don’t know if they have been able to do that yet.”

Fields said it is his understanding that the Morgantown facility will make the parts of the turbine that spin.

“The generators will be made somewhere else and it will all be put together here,” he explained.

Wind Energy still has a demonstration turbine in Western Kentucky University’s Center for Innovation and Commercialization; the company’s partner in research and development, Dynastrosi, also has an office there, Bolton said.

The company was approved in July 2007 for up to $3.4 million in tax incentives for the Morgantown facility by the Kentucky Economic Development Finance Authority, and also received a $595,000 grant for its headquarters.

Matt McGarvey of Kentucky Science and Technology Corp. said when the companies apply for the investment funds through his group, “they provide us with the only information that we can release about what they do.”

A state-provided news release said “Wind Energy’s groundbreaking research, gathering highly detailed wind speed and gust data, is enabling applications and sites never before even considered. The unique wind sail design of their turbines provides robust, scalable systems, allowing easy integration into customers’ new or existing facilities.”

When it first came to the area, the company said its products could operate with as little as 4 mph of wind velocity, instead of the traditional 8-12 mph.

Program funds of $30,000 each also were granted to the following: Neathery Technologies (Lexington), RE Strategies (Midway), Thermobaric Energy Systems, LLC (Madisonville), Kentucky Renewable Energy (Paducah), and Kozo Saito, University of Kentucky (Lexington). Another equity investment of $250,000 was made to Louisville Clean Energy.

The program’s investments target high-growth potential, early stage Kentucky-based companies developing and commercializing alternative fuel and/or renewable energy technologies, according to Mandy Lambert of the Kentucky Cabinet for Economic Development.

— The fund is currently accepting new applications for grants and investments, with an application deadline of 4 p.m. EDT Aug. 20. The application and guidelines are available at www.startupkentucky.com.