LITTLE ROCK — If you’re like me, you’ve wondered what it would cost to convert the energy needs of your home to a solar system.
With today’s trend toward soaking citizens for every tax and fee imaginable, finding a way to get yourself off the power grid sounds like plugging into wisdom.
It has a pleasant ring for more than one reason. Those who endured the great ice storm of 2009 understand what life is like without power.
Bill and Faune Conner of Fayetteville started small by installing a 3-kilowatt solar system and just kept on adding on until they had probably the largest rooftop solar power array in the state. And at 1,800 square feet, their house is no mansion.
The couple’s obsession with savings and reliability when electrical power fails led them ultimately to install enough panels and a battery system to store 48 volts and 64 usable kilowatt hours. Overall, the system generates about 27,000 kwh a year. That’s enough to handle about twice what a house that size would use in a year.
The Conners decided to plunge headlong into sun power when they realized that the cost of solar panels had dropped 30percent. They also learned that the more solar panels installed on a house, the faster that investment pays for itself.
According to Bill Conner, a 3-kwh solar system without a battery backup would cost in the neighborhood of $19,000. Although he didn’t care to discuss how much they have invested in their solar power system, simple ciperhin’ tells me that they’ve got a whole lot o’ money perched atop their home that Conner hopes will pay for itself in his lifetime.
UFOs
Jim Taylor and his three grandsons, John Riley, 9, Hayden, 13, and Adam, 15, were in their back yard in the south part of Springdale just after 9 p.m. last Saturday when one of the boys shouted to look toward the clouds being swept along by an incoming weather front.
Coming from the southwest beneath the clouds were about 30 lights all moving rapidly in a fairly straight formation, each reflecting an intense but consistent light about “the size of a .22 bullet.”
The radiance from each object seemed to Taylor much like the glow emitted by the intense flame of a hot air balloon. It became quickly evident to him that these objects were moving “eight to nine times faster” than the clouds above them.
“They clearly weren’t hot air balloons or airplanes,” he said.
The objects flew rapidly together at the same speed and height, staying pretty much in a lengthy but scattered formation. As they approached the Taylor home, the lights dimmed, then went dark, but the family couldstill see the objects against the lighter shaded clouds behind them.
Those with younger eyes in the group swore that they could see the objects actually changing shapes, from circular to triangular. Taylor said his eyesight isn’t that sharp any more, “but Hayden is a young artist and he went right in and drew a pretty accurate picture of what we all watched fly over the house.”
“I know I’ve never seen anything like what we saw” he added.
The family ran into the front yard to watch the objects finally disappear. Then they looked at each other in bewilderment.
“I also know that 30 balloonists surewouldn’t be flying at night in these mountains, and so much lower and faster than the clouds,” Taylor said. “And those things didn’t make a sound, so they weren’t airplanes. I just don’t know. But we saw the same thing.”
Now I’m wondering if anyone else saw the objects a week ago tonight. They seemed to be traveling from the direction of Fort Smith and Van Buren. In the words of the late Winston Churchill, it’s a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. Let me know if you saw what Taylor and his grandsons saw.
Just wondering
Just bear with me as I wonder out loud. Actually, I initially raised this scenario at the dinner table three weeks ago.
Let’s suppose that those whose money and influence were behind electing our current president, who seems oddly disengaged and unconcerned with his low polling numbers, yet intent on golfing, concerting, banqueting and vacationing his way through office, never expected him to run for a second term.
Just suppose he was told from the beginning of his candidacy that he would become the nation’s first minority president and would make further history by wholly reshaping the direction of our free nation and usurping our free-enterprise economy, and that this “transformation” into a government-dominated nation would create such national turmoil that he’d only be able to serve one term.
Afterward, another candidate-wonder who that could be-would step in to become the nominee in 2012. Hey, now, don’t get yer Spandex Speedo in a wad. It’s just me speculatin’.
Mike Masterson is opinion editor of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette’s Northwest edition.
Editorial, Pages 17 on 07/31/2010