KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (WVLT) - Before Wampler’s famous sausage ends up on your breakfast plate, it gets a big boost from renewable energy: solar and a first-of-its-kind ‘proton power’; off the line and partially off the grid. “We go green above red on our E-Gauge,” Ted Wampler told WVLT News.

Wampler said the farm that’s his family’s namesake actually feeds the nearby LCUB lines on weekends. “We are making a lot more energy than we are consuming,” he said. On workdays, it’s 12 percent of the total usage. “We think he’d be right proud if he could see where we are today.”

The Wampler family legacy goes back over eight decades.“Every year it gets more and more important to save energy, as you’re having to consume it,” Wampler said.

The fourth generation of Wamplers, Martha and Trae, are helping him trim the fat on the bottom line. “There is definitely a financial win,” Trae said.

To retro-fitting decades-old freezers with insulation and installing hundreds of thousands of watts in solar panels. “The price for solar, really, it’s a fraction of what it used to be,” Trae said.

Many of their projects were offset with grants from the United States Department of Agriculture’s Reap Grants. “So, of course running freezers in East Tennessee’s climate is very expensive,” Trae said.

Solar power is a common idea now but what about proton power? Its what the Wamplers call their gasification of biomass.

“It’s the world’s first commercial install, and it’s just as cool as it can be,” Ted said.

Cool to reduce the heating bill and cool to reduce their impact on a warmer climate. By using very, very high heat and unique fuel.

“Extreme heat, in the absence of oxygen,” Ted said. “We can process junk mail, telephone poles, railroad ties, anything that’s plant.”

Wampler’s feeds the hydrogen gas into a big CAT generator built to run on natural gas. They also end up with pure water, and a valuable by-product that offsets the cost of running the machine.

“If it does what it should do, this is going to be great for all humankind,” Ted said.

Ted told WVLT News that visitors from around the world come to their Loudon County farm to see if the tech can be scaled in their own country.

Martha, Trae, and Ted are the first to tell you about the cost savings but feel a sense of stewardship for the future.

“Access to reliable energy is directly related to income,” Ted said. “And of course for us, we want to get where every person on the planet, every family, can afford a premium sausage for breakfast.”