Safe, Clean, Reliable, and Affordable: I often use these words to describe the electric power supply that Buckeye Power and all of the electric cooperatives around the state strive to provide to our member-consumers. Each of these words is important to us, and each has a different measure of success.
Reliable may be the easiest for you to observe. Do the lights come on every day? Is the supply adequate for your needs? When something occasionally causes a power outage, is power restored quickly?
Along a narrow road that snakes through the woodsy hills north of Zanesville, Ripple Rock Farms sits on 15 country acres where Guernsey-Muskingum Electric Cooperative members Craig and Traci Bell have lived for several years.
In a few years, you may be able to spend your morning commute reading a book, checking e-mail, or even napping, thanks to self-driving car technology.
While they aren’t exactly as high-functioning as KITT, the crime-fighting black Camaro from the old Knight Rider TV series, autonomous vehicles from the likes of Google, Tesla, and other companies have proven that we are on the cusp of being able to take our hands off the wheel.
When people patronize Carillon Brewing Company in Dayton this month, they’ll discover a Valentine-worthy beer — beet ale — that’s vibrant, earthy, and perfect for winning over hearts and waking up taste buds. “It’s a red ale, made from beet sugar, that’s sweet and very tasty,” says Brady Kress, the Dayton History president and CEO who masterminded Carillon Brewing.
There is a 140-foot-tall communications tower positioned at Mid-Ohio Energy Cooperative’s substation in Ada that’s vital to the co-op’s mission to provide reliable electric service to its more than 8,000 owner-members.
At the top are two radios that are part of Mid-Ohio Energy’s microwave communications network — one that communicates with another substation, and another that points back to the co-op office in Kenton — and unless both are working, the co-op would have difficulty communicating with critical systems at several substations.
If you still have an old dial thermostat controlling the temperature in your home, you might take note of new technology available that lets thermostats do things they never could before. That said, it’s worth asking if these new thermostats can save enough money to justify the extra cost.
There are three main types of thermostats: manual, programmable, or smart.
It’s easy to find Joe Bodis’s property in Huron County, a few miles southeast of New London, Ohio. Just look for the house surrounded by “weeds.”
In actuality, those “weeds” are a carefully planned and developed island of wildlife habitat in a sea of corn and soybean fields. “When I first moved in, neighbors used to stop and ask when I was going to mow the weeds,” Bodis says. “Now they ask what things they can do on their property to attract wildlife.”
A retired pharmaceuticals salesman and member of Firelands Electric Cooperative, Bodis moved to his 5 acres in 2002.
