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POWER TALK
LETTERS
Country Doctors the ‘Best’
I look forward to receiving Texas Co-op Power because I have come to expect at least one article in each issue to inform and delight me. The February issue is no exception. In fact, for me, the article by Sandy Sheehy, “Country Doctors,” is the best of the best. It makes me want to load up my trailer and move to Weimar. More important, it fills me with hope and thanksgiving that rural physician programs exist in Texas medical schools and that doctors opt to embrace this gift. Thanks for the good work your magazine does.
Harold Hollis
Navasota Valley Electric Cooperative
Solar Systems Expensive
The two primary issues in developing and integrating alternative energy are seamless, ease-of-use reliability and cost factors. As an example, current market for an installed, turnkey photovoltaic (PV) system is around $9 per watt generated, so a 5-kilowatt home system would be about $45,000 before rebates, if any. This assumes a six-hour-a-day average, and such a system would generate about 10,950 kilowatt-hours a year, $1,095 at 10 cents per kWh, which works out to a 41-year payback. But that energy is generated almost entirely during the so-called “peak” hours. The two main factors to consider with self-generation are: What do you pay now? And how long do you expect to live where you are?
Daniel Lea
Cedar Park
Pedernales Electric Cooperative
EARTH MIGHT FEEL SOLAR STORMS
The effects of a storm raging in the heavens will soon be felt here on Earth, scientists have warned. The first sunspots in an erupting geomagnetic solar storm have been detected on the sun’s surface, heralding the start of what some observers predict will be a strong 11-year storm cycle.
In the past, solar storms, in which the sun’s magnetic field sends highly charged material toward Earth, have led to power grid failures and interfered with satellites. With society’s reliance on cellular communications and global positioning satellite devices, this most recent storm, expected to peak in 2011 or 2012, has the potential for widespread disruptions.
On the bright side, the storms in the past have allowed Texans glimpses of the northern lights.
FREEZER CURTAINS KEEP COLD AIR IN
My wife made plastic curtains for each shelf of our upright freezer and suspended them from curtain rods at the front edge of each shelf. It precludes loss of cold air, which saves defrosting cycles and power cycles and money.
M.L. Campbell
Comanche County Electric Cooperative
COPPER THEFT HAS CONSEQUENCES
A man, presumed to have been involved in an attempted copper theft in Austin February 27, received an estimated 80,000-volt shock and died at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio. He suffered burns over 100 percent of his body.
“He was cutting a wire that goes from the equipment into the ground,” said Ed Clark of Austin Energy. “This a favorite target of those who are after copper because you can possibly cut a wire that is a grounding wire and remove it. The problem is, if you touch equipment in certain ways or in two connection points, you can be, of course, shocked.”
Meanwhile, under an enhanced sentencing law, a copper thief was convicted February 15 and sentenced to two years in a state felony facility and fined $5,000. The theft occurred last November in the New Home Community served by Rusk County Electric Cooperative. During the trial, co-op employees said that copper wire theft has cost cooperatives and other power providers in East Texas alone approximately $4.3 million.
Copper is selling for more than $3 a pound—hardly enough money to risk your life for.
QUOTABLE
I am forced to conclude that God made Texas on His day off, for pure entertainment, just to prove what diversity could be crammed into one section of earth by a really Top Hand. When it comes to accounting for the diversity in Texas, I think God just outdid Himself.
Mary Lasswell
I’ll Take Texas, Houghton Mifflin, 1958
HAPPENINGS
Stare down the barrel of history at “Samuel Colt: Arms, Art and Invention,” an exhibition of firearms owned or invented by this amazing 19th-century weapon maker.
Meet the gun that won the West—the Colt .45—and take in other treasures, including art and awards related to Colt’s life, during this exhibition that runs May 24 through September 1 at the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum in Canyon.
The exhibition looks back at Colt the inventor, collector and marketing guru who demonstrated the value of branding, introduced manufacturing production lines and came up with the concept of interchangeable parts for firearms.
Colt’s firearms are known for their simplicity and elegance, from their exquisite lines to their eye-catching finishes of highly polished blue steel, color case hardening and cool white silver-plate meant to reflect light.
For more information, call (806) 651-2244 or go to www.panhandleplains.org.
MOORE COUNTY COURTHOUSE SYMBOLIZES A NEW BEGINNING
In downtown Dumas sits the Moore County Courthouse, a 1930 brick-and-concrete structure flanked with ornamental eagles. The top floor of the courthouse, designed in the Moderne architectural style by firm Berry and Hatch, originally served as county lockup. In the late 1800s, a plague of grasshoppers almost turned Dumas into a ghost town, chasing away all residents including the town’s namesake, railroad entrepreneur Louis Dumas. In 1926, oil and natural gas were discovered in Moore County, and the population started to boom. Railroad lines connected the county seat to other communities, and the town came back to life. The courthouse still stands in its original glory on the square, where it serves as a reminder of the area’s rebirth.
From The Courthouses of Texas, Texas A&M University Press, second edition, 2007
SALES TAX HOLIDAY IN MAY FOR ENERGY-EFFICIENT PRODUCTS
If you need a new energy-efficient product, wait until Memorial Day weekend to make your purchase. Texas shoppers get a break from state and local sales and use taxes on purchases of many Energy Star products from 12:01 a.m. on Saturday, May 24, to 11:59 p.m. on Monday, May 26 (Memorial Day).
Products qualifying for the exemption are:
• Air conditioners priced under $6,000 (room and central units)
• Clothes washers (but not clothes dryers)
• Ceiling fans
• Dehumidifiers
• Dishwashers
• Light bulbs (incandescent and fluorescent)
• Programmable thermostats
• Refrigerators priced under $2,000
Qualifying products will display the Energy Star logo on the appliance, the packaging or the Energy Guide label.
WHO KNEW?
There’s something good to say about those nasty flying cockroaches from Asia, after all. According to the Associated Press, they love to devour the eggs of bollworms and beet army worms, which threaten cotton, soybean, corn, tomato, cabbage and a variety of other crops. But like many other beneficial insects, they are susceptible to pesticides.
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