November 30, 2025 • 59 mins
In this episode of Curry Café, hosts Ray Gary and Rick McNamer speak with Jim and Louise Abbott, a retired Lutheran pastor and a developmental biologist, about faith, environmental issues, and sustainable living. They explore the challenges of interpreting scripture in modern society and the divisive role of politics in matters of faith. The conversation shifts to environmental health, discussing the dangers of heavy metals, microplastics, and climate change. The Abbotts share insights from their recent solar panel installation, highlighting technological advances, financial incentives, and the broader impact on reducing carbon footprints. The episode encourages personal responsibility, collective action, and adaptation of renewable energy for a healthier future.
We encourage anyone with differing views to participate in future Curry Café discussions. If you would like to join the panel, email contact@kciw.org or call 541-661-4098.
Hosts: Ray Gary, Rick McNamer; Producers: Ray Gary, Rick McNamer
Intro and end music by Kat Liddell. Used with permission.
The opinions expressed here are those of the individual participants. Curry Coast Community Radio takes no position on issues discussed in this program.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:03):
Well, hello again, KCIW
listeners, and welcome to Curry Cafe.
I'm volunteer Rick McNamer.
Every Sunday from three to four, your host,
Ray Gary, puts together a panel of guests
to discuss various topics of interest.
Listeners can participate by texting questions or comments
to
(541)
(00:25):
661-4098.
Again, that's (541)
661-4098.
Now a little,
different, before we launch into it, I wanted
to get a couple of shout outs. The
last couple three weeks, I believe, we had
some hiccups, so we've been not going live,
but today, we are live. So, yeah, you
(00:46):
can check-in.
And we missed a couple of shout outs
to,
number one, belatedly,
November 11, Veterans Day.
So just wanted to give a shout out
and a thank you to all the veterans.
And
November being Native American Heritage Month, we, just
wanted to give a shout out to that.
This is a big tribal area here and,
(01:08):
really well deserved to have a month to
honor them.
Okay? So here's Ray to tell us about
today's show. Okay. We have a couple of,
different sort of guests today that are gonna
talk about themselves.
And that's about all I could think to
introduce. So why don't we just start with
you, Robert, and
continue around the table
clockwise
(01:30):
and give us a little
30
words or less,
whatever.
My name is Jim Abbott, and I'm a
retired Lutheran pastor.
I've retired three times already,
and I'm back at work helping out a
church in
Crescent. Crescent City, California.
There are Episcopalians
down there, but I went to a seminary
(01:52):
that was a Lutheran seminary that lived inside
an Episcopal seminary. So I'm kind of a
Luther palean.
You combine that. I combine that. That's great.
And,
that's what I've been doing for about the
last twenty three, twenty four years. Okay. We'll
we'll get back to you in a minute
to find out what the difference between those
(02:12):
religions are. Oh, not much, to be real
honest.
But it wouldn't work with Catholic, I guess.
That's just We're trying. Oh, okay.
Oh, I'm Louise Abbott. I'm married to to
Jim Abbott for fifty years now and counting.
Nice. Well, happy. Thank you. So Fiftieth.
Yeah. But was he arrested shortly before or
(02:34):
after you No. We're just Oh, you older
than we look. Okay.
But, I am,
a retired university professor, but I have a
PhD in developmental biology and a DVM degree,
so I'm also a veterinarian.
And for the past thirty five years before
I retired, I taught at various veterinary schools,
(02:56):
first at Washington State and then University of
Illinois, and then I did, twenty my last
twenty four years of teaching were at Texas
A and M University in Bryan College,
Station, Texas. Wow. And so but retired. I
grew up in Oregon and in Lake Oswego.
So I told Jim when we got married
fifty years ago that we would be retiring
to Oregon and we did, about seven years
(03:18):
ago.
Just I have to ask real quick, how
long were you both in Texas
for how long? Yes. That's where Jim, first,
became a pastor was in Texas. Oh, okay.
And, and well, I was teaching at Texas
A and M University. Okay. Yeah. Alright.
Alright. So how do you help out on
a church?
This the church in Crescent City is doing
(03:39):
what they call a discernment
process.
It's a small congregation, and they're trying to
figure out what's next for them as a
as a group.
They're paired up with five other churches and
each one of those churches has what they
call a companion to help them through the
process, and that's the job I'm doing there.
I'm
moderating some discussions and talking to the people,
(04:02):
trying to figure out what's next for that
group.
So are they,
like,
sharing the same building or
No. Different I imagine there's enough difference in
the philosophies to Actually have different religion.
Lutherans and Episcopalians
about eight or, oh, more than that. I
was in seminary
when they signed a national agreement to share
(04:24):
pastors. We have what they call pulpit fellowship.
So I am, with the permission of the
local bishop,
authorized to perform all the duties of an
Episcopal priest,
and Episcopal priests are allowed to perform all
the duties of a Lutheran pastor, and there's
not a heck of a lot of difference
between the two.
Well,
it's like the obvious denominational.
(04:46):
What? Multi denominational. It's like multi denominational.
We Which seems to make the most sense
Right. To me.
Part of the reason that there are two
separate
denominations is entirely historical circumstance. Okay. It's not
theological difference. Okay. There are some theological differences,
which
(05:07):
with a lot of,
blood, sweat, and words
were overcome before both of the national assemblies
of those two denominations
passed resolutions allowing this to happen. Okay.
So It it just sounds so
brotherly love, no infighting between different denominations, which
apparently can happen in some Yeah. Churches, but
(05:29):
it doesn't sound like it happens Well, actually
where you're at. What happened is among the
Lutherans,
couple three, four hundred churches left the denomination
because they weren't happy about it. Oh,
wow.
Okay. With a church that had over 5,000
congregations,
the numbers were not really significant.
Okay.
So with leaving the the the fold would
(05:52):
be things like gay marriage and Yeah. Oh,
that was that was even bigger. Uh-huh. The
agreement to share with the Episcopalians, couple 300
left, many, many more Lutheran churches have left
over the relationship between
faith and
sexuality.
And personally, speaking only personally because I'm not
authorized to speak on behalf of the entire
(06:14):
denomination,
I
see it as an issue
of theology that I have figured out
and following the advice and doing some reading
of some very fine theologians.
Consider that
I'm much more happy with two people of
(06:35):
the same
biological
gender
who love, honor, respect, and cherish each other
than some guy who walked into my office
and he wants to get married for the
fourth time to another different woman.
That makes sense. Yeah. Well, it does. It
does. So that's kind of where I am.
That is where I am. Not kind of,
(06:55):
that is where I am. I believe that
the way you treat each other and the
way you respect each other,
the way you participate in a community that
treats and respects others
with dignity
and grace
and generosity
is much more important. Well,
I can understand,
(07:16):
the churches, especially
the ones that stick closer to fundamentalism, I
guess,
having having this problem with same sex relationship,
but I just cannot understand
how politicians have
a have a problem with it.
They're using it Well, I'm sorry. I do
understand they're pandering to a problem. They're pandering
(07:36):
to they're using it as a weapon
in
among people to gin up their base Yeah.
If that's still expression is still used? Yeah.
I believe so. I believe so. To motivate
We can use it here if we want
to, if it's our show. Okay.
Feel feel free to coin any expressions you
bear to. No. I better keep it safe
(07:57):
and sane. Sane? Okay.
No. They they they're using that.
And, honestly,
there
are quite a there are kind of two
major differences in the way you read the
Bible.
You can read it literally word for word
Mhmm. And claim that there are no errors
of either fact or history contained therein,
(08:20):
or you can read it as a series
of experiences between God and the people of
God,
and you take the Bible as a whole
and don't focus on individual words or single
verses, but take the whole message from beginning
to
end and say
God's intention for humanity
(08:41):
is a
kingdom of love and justice
where each individual flourishes to the best of
their ability.
And on a similar subject, why,
politicians and some churches get so upset about
sex change
operations or
(09:02):
procedures. And that to me sounds like a
biological thing from with a little bit I
know about it. I mean, people were born
with these
parts that weren't quite
I I have known
on a fair fairly well
a couple of people who are who have
changed gyms.
(09:22):
And at least one of them
that I knew
is a is a
much more comfortable
and a really a much nicer person as
a man than he was as a woman.
Yeah.
Well, you can yeah. There's a if there's
underlying frustration you have, then absolutely that would
(09:44):
be the case. But that's something that really
needs to be worked out on a very
detailed personal level with a spiritual
adviser. And medical adviser. And medical adviser. And
it's not a it's not a walk in
the office one way and walk out the
other. Wait a minute. Did didn't you hear
that kids were going to school, little Billy
was going to school, and mom was kissing
him and hugging him? Have a nice day,
(10:05):
Billy.
And the next time she saw him, he
was a girl? You didn't you didn't you
didn't catch that guy?
Missed that one. That was weird. We missed
that. Well, see, we don't watch a lot
of TV. Okay.
We don't actually have a working TV in
our house, so we must have missed it.
Okay. This was actually being said, not quite
like that, but almost verbatim. Let's do it.
(10:25):
Well, listen Oh, without the parents' consent. That's
the other thing. Okay. Okay. Now we're gonna
do a pretty big one eighty here, but
that's okay. This is all in and it's
great stuff, and I do love that message.
I do. I think we all love that
message.
So Louise is here also to talk about
again, this is a one eighty. I guess
the one eighty is correct.
(10:45):
Solar panels.
Solar panels in van, that,
that gets bounced around a lot. And I
have tons of questions, but, Louise, why don't
you go ahead and give us your quick
synopsis about what your your both of yours
experiences
with solar panels. Before we do that, could
we have her total of her story as
(11:06):
to why she
chose the field she did and chose That's
part of the whole thing. Okay. You bet.
Okay. Go ahead, Louise. Okay. The the before
we get to solar panels,
I, I've always been interested in biology. And
when I was in eighth grade, I had
a really great biology teacher, and
I said, Wow, this is really interesting. And
(11:26):
I said, You know, you're teaching us stuff
that's really, really cool. And he said, Yeah,
this is how they teach in college. I
said, Well, okay, that's what I wanna do
when I grow up, is I wanna be
a college professor
and teach biology. And then when I got
into,
college and I decided what I really wanted
to do was teach in a veterinary school.
I really I loved animals and I loved
(11:47):
teaching, and I said, how can I put
these together? And I said, wow. I could
I could teach in a veterinary school. So
I I earned my PhD first and then
I went to veterinary school,
at Washington State. And while I was there,
one of the biology one of the anatomy
professors left, so they asked me to
to quit my program. I was a year
into it, quit my program, just become a
(12:08):
university professor, teach anatomy. I said, no, no.
I wanna finish my my DVM degree. So
I was a part time veterinary student, part
time,
anatomy professor
for for five years at Washington State University,
and I had no idea at the time
how unusual that was to be able to
be a, professor and a student at the
same time.
But anyway, so, I, finished up my DVM
(12:29):
degree and then,
for re various reasons, then went to University
of Illinois to teach there for six years.
Didn't like it so much, so then went
to Texas A and M to to teach,
there. So I taught anatomy, histology, embryology.
I also did research in developmental neuroscience, looking
at how,
(12:50):
heavy metals affected brain developments. That was my
research component for what I did.
And then I retired.
Now I'm back in Oregon. I would say
this is a pretty full life up to
now.
Wow. That's fantastic. Speaking of brain capacities and
things that affect them, are there heavy metals
floating around in America right now? Well We
(13:11):
seem to be doing a lot of very
crazy things. Well, yeah. There there are a
lot of heavy metals. Most of the heavy
metals that we, are exposed to are in
what we eat and drink. I mean, there
will be some things in air pollution as
well, but but the one of the metals
that I studied a lot was with mercury,
which we can get from consuming fish, particularly
ocean fish. Yeah. And so mercury is very,
(13:34):
the developing brain is very sensitive to the
very low levels of mercury. What it causes
is is the the the neurons, the brain
cells themselves will not develop properly so that
you can't get good connections between so the
neurons won't talk together
very well, and so you get then,
developmental delays in terms of of development of
the brain and and and incapacities of the
(13:55):
brain to develop You're sounding pretty familiar right
now to,
a lot of what's going on in this
country. Yeah. Really.
So, yeah, I think we're all eating too
much fish, Maybe that's what chemtrails are.
Let's not get into chemtrails.
Well, you know, god, it's how sad that
is. You know, we're always, for a long
time, told to eat more seafood, eat more
(14:18):
fish, which I do. But, yeah. And and
this has to do with the pollution, I
guess. Yes. Right. Massive pollution that we're still
on. Mercury,
PCBs,
dioxins, those are all things all kinds of
of toxicants that you can find in fish
and and other foods as well. Actually,
even,
soil mercury will come in in soils and
(14:38):
then,
it can actually be incorporated into some of
our plants. Like, some rice some rice in
some areas of the world will have higher
levels of mercury, in it than we'd expect
it to. So plants too. Can I get
Does the plastics come into this at all?
I mean, we Well, plastics, microplastics in particular,
the little tiny tiny, tiny particles of microplastics
get into everywhere. They they get into our
(14:59):
water and then they can be incorporated,
either into,
plants or they will then be consumed also
by small animals, which are consumed by large
animals, you know, that the whole the whole,
you know, scale of of, a pattern of
eating in terms of small things being eaten
by the bigger things. Anyway, so we will
we consume much of the microplastics we consume,
(15:19):
will be in what we eat and also
what we drink. For example,
a number of different types of tea bags
will,
have when you use them, you do tea
bag in your hot water, it'll actually dissolve
microplastics,
depending on how the tea bag is made
Mhmm. Into the water, and then you consume
it. So we consume microplastics all the time
Yeah. What we drink. I consider that to
(15:40):
be the death knell.
What now? The death knell? Yes. What, of
the planet? Yeah.
These plastics are getting in more and more
things. Well, they're not coming out, and we're
not doing anything to improve it. So Right.
Yeah. The that yeah. They're everywhere. And and,
you know, it's it's just destroying our our
aquatic life because they're consuming the plastics and
then they die. And Yeah. It's it's really
(16:01):
a it's really something to be concerned about.
These No. I think you're gonna wind up
in the gullet of a, something or other
somewhere in the, Southeast houses for a little
bit about I mean, they've even found them
on the I'm gonna go deep here, pun
intended, I guess, the Marianas Trench with the
animals that live down there. They found them
(16:22):
The the microplastics. Microplastics. Yes. In the Antarctic.
There it's everywhere.
Okay. Yeah.
Well, we're bouncing around. We're covering a lot
of sun. Yes. Everyday's growth. If you have
a quick comment Okay. Since we've been so
so,
Eclectic?
No.
Good one. Depressed about Oh, depressed. Do do
you see anything for that in the future?
(16:44):
Of An improvement or a way to improve
it?
We have to like, Steve mentioned what's already
out there. You know, people say that one
individual can't do anything, but
it only works if every if individuals do
actually do something. So my thought is is
that every individual should try
to reduce the use of plastics. I mean,
(17:05):
that's what we do in our household is
is I try not to,
buy water and bottles. I refuse to drink
from these things. Yeah. But anyway, the point
is is that that I think as an
individual, we try to do what we can
to reduce
and recycle
and that sort of thing. So, you know
The old adage, every little bit helps. It
does. It does. And so if if everybody
(17:25):
did a little bit, it would be a
really important thing. So Right. To just to
reuse the reuse what you've got or, you
know, don't don't, you know, bring your your
cloth bags instead of getting plastic bags
and things like that. I think that's that's
what I try to do, and I think
if everybody
tried to do that, it would it would
it would help. How do we make that
common sense? I I live in a community
(17:47):
where we all have our garbage cans out
on garbage day on a
online there. It's about a dozen of them.
Every now and then, a bear will decide
that they don't look good like that. And
when a bear gets into some, it doesn't
just knock it over. That's right. It you
know, it's a 100 square yards.
But in in all of this, there's a
whole bunch of of plastic always, aluminum cans,
(18:09):
things that are not only easily
recycled but are effectively recycled. And
it seems like I may be the only
one in my community that even cares about
that. And I'm Well, yeah. Recycling is important,
and I think
and,
you know, because now they take fives.
CTR now takes plastics, ones, two, and fives.
They will take fives now.
(18:30):
And so and and then they'll take the
tin cans and they'll take the paper and
they'll take the cardboard.
So we we we live way up on
Gardner Ridge, and so we have to come
down to town. But we we do our
recycling. And so we just have a bin
at our house and every couple weeks we
we take it down and we we take
all of our, if we have aluminum cans,
then then those go to,
(18:52):
the, South Coast Humane
Society Yeah. For their, recycling Good organization.
Yeah. And so so I it's it's it's
it takes a little bit of an effort,
but if you kinda get used to doing
it and you and you get make a
pattern of it, it it makes it a
little bit easier. I'm not sure that too
many people who don't recycle are not doing
it because of the amount of work there
(19:12):
is, but that they just think it's all
nonsense.
They don't believe in a global warming's a
hoax. Well and we have There's a lot
of, yeah, misinformation out there that that I
mean,
we've had the last ten years of of
recorded history have been the hottest
of recorded of the last so and next
year will probably only be hotter on average.
(19:34):
Now people say, oh, but we had such
a cold spring or whatever. Well,
locally,
you know, you you can't just look at
the local,
Not looking at weather. You're looking at climate.
You had to look at you had to
climate globally. Right. Globally. Yes. Yeah. I I
just I seem to remember living in the
valley, Sacramento Valley where I came from. They're
talking about the droughts and it's a rain
one day, and everybody's like, well, see, we
(19:55):
know we got rain. Yeah. There's no drought.
Yeah. Any weather that brought this the
the snowball into Oh, god. Yeah. That too.
That too. With global warming. So before we
go on, and we haven't even touched the
main subject, but we will. Okay. But I
just wanna give out the text line again.
(541)
661-4098.
So
(20:16):
are we ready to Yes. To delve Okay.
Into the maybe if one of you has
a,
sick
dog out there or something, we could get
a diagnosis. I don't know. I'm not licensed
to practice, I'm Oregon. We're not to that
comment from from mister Ray. This is a
this is an undisclosed location.
(20:36):
Okay, Louise. Go ahead.
Well, Jim, why don't you go ahead and
and just explain
why
why we why we decided to do this
now and and what we were thinking about
because he he kinda
he kinda snowballed this first. Yes.
Currently
and until December 31,
there is an income tax credit
(20:58):
available
for installing solar equipment.
And so
we kind of put this off as Louise
mentioned earlier. We talked to our builder about
it, and he was not too enthused about
including that in the original building.
So we kind of, spent our time and
money between then and now on other projects,
(21:20):
But then we decide I kind of said,
well, if we're gonna do it, we need
to do it. Yeah. And given the current
political climate, it's not gonna come back again
in the next two years probably. For sure,
and I believe. Yes.
So,
and I spent,
as I mentioned before maybe, I've retired three
times now,
and I'm working on number four.
(21:42):
From August
2023
till April,
I served as the interim pastor
at a church in Medford, Oregon.
So I commuted back and forth, and Medford
is Not every day, but just Not every
day. I did, like, four there and three
here. Or Yeah. A trip to Medford is
excruciating, but go ahead.
(22:04):
And you should see the solar panels on
houses over there. Oh, I'd really. They are,
in the clutches of
Pacific Power Mhmm.
Which,
derives a significant part of their electricity. That's
who I have in Smith River, by the
way. Pacific Power. Yeah. Pacific Power. And I
believe they get at least a significant portion
(22:25):
of their electrons from coal fired power plants.
Mhmm. So electricity is not cheap in Medford.
Right.
While we here in Brookings are blessed with,
Kooskuri Electric, which is an electric cooperative. They're
not in it for the money. And they
get a lot of their electricity
from the federal,
dams that have been built over the last
(22:47):
seventy, eighty years. So we have hydroelectric power,
which is
renewable
every time it rains.
And,
but on the other hand,
that's not gonna go forever and it's not
going to meet future needs.
We need to
Electric power usage is going up
(23:10):
and,
electric power that comes over those wonderful wires
up in the mountains where we are sometimes
doesn't come over the wires. Yeah. In the
wintertime. In the wintertime especially. They try very
hard and they do a very good job
of restoring electricity, but we can go several
days without.
And so I said, well,
let's look into solar power because a lot
(23:32):
of people I knew in Medford,
have it and like it.
We got a hold of a outfit in
Medford,
and they
worked with us. They sent a person out
to estimate,
what would be involved. As we mentioned earlier,
that's the guy that used that grew up
in Brookings
that had to go to Medford to get
(23:52):
a job with a future.
Mhmm.
He took a lot of pictures, made a
lot of notes, did a lot of measurements.
They came back with a bid. We said
go for it. So we put solar panels
on our roof
and a large battery storage battery in the,
part of the garage, actually. Oh.
And they said, well, this usually takes six
(24:14):
to eight weeks.
They called us about a week later and
said, we had a cancellation. Can we start
tomorrow?
Oh, hello. Come on down or come on
up. Yeah. That's exactly right. No. No. No.
Right. And so the first day, there were
four or five people working, two of them
actually installing the panels on the roof,
and two more,
electricians
doing the rest of the wiring to complete
(24:36):
the system. Okay.
So how how long did it take to
put that up?
Two days. Two days. Two days. Two days.
Now we have what we
solar panels come as these units. And so
I don't know if it's an exact standard
size, but these are look like Okay. Any
solar panel you'd probably see on a roof.
So we have 15 of those solar panels
(24:58):
installed
and,
on on our roof.
And, then they they all connect to a
a battery, which then is connected to our
electric system. So if the power goes out,
then the battery the electricity will automatically
switch to the battery. So the solar panels
power the battery that once the batteries when
(25:18):
the and then the battery will charge our
house, run the electricity to our house. So
let's boy. And this is way above my
pay grade with electrical stuff, but I'm gonna
go there anyway. Mhmm. So the power goes
out, let's say, for a week
where Right. How long will that battery power
your house?
Roughly.
Roughly.
Well, what do we figure? Two and a
(25:38):
half days? Two and a half days without
recharging? Without recharging. Okay. But you gotta remember
that during any time when there's light, the
panels are
pouring the energy into the battery Right. Through
sunlight. Yes. Through sunlight. But even on a
cloudy day,
solar panels will charge. It just won't charge
as fast. So only really when there's no
light at all are these panels not charging.
(26:01):
Oh, okay. So some amount of light,
will charge those panels, but bright sunlight will
charge them faster. Okay. Okay? I I used
to have solar panels and, criteria was if
you if it made a shadow, if you
put your hand over the panel, and if
that was that you you were getting kind
of a jay down here? Not only not
only that, but
(26:21):
the fault photovoltaic
effect goes back to
early in the twentieth century? Yes. Oh. Okay.
Yes. So they knew that that light would
make
electrons
move around and go where you want them
to go.
Now efficiency
and the ability to work at low light
levels has improved dramatically
(26:42):
over the last
fifteen or twenty years, and there are people
working on it still trying to make it
more and more efficient,
have fewer panels on your roof for the
same amount of output, or get
output at lower light levels.
Right. Research continues,
and they are we've kind of hit an
inflection point
(27:03):
where
putting solar panels up now makes sense.
Okay. So you would encourage anyone
around even the because this area, well, you're
up above the Right. But even we know
people who who put solar panels even down
here in Brookings. Yeah. And and and, again,
some amount of light, it will charge those
(27:23):
it will charge those panels, and that will
create electricity that can be used in your
house. Now will it create all the electricity
you need? Maybe, maybe not. Depends on how
many panels you have and exactly, you know,
how they're positioned and things like that. Yeah.
But it will create some amount of electricity
that then can be used,
by whoever owns that home. And then theoretically,
(27:45):
if you generate more electricity than you're using,
it will go back into the electric grid.
K? Oh, that's right. Exactly. Actually helping
other people?
Or or Well, yes. Well, you send you
you send yeah. You send your the electricity
goes back to the electric grid grid. You
have what's called a a net meter. A
net meter
is one that the electric company has to
(28:05):
we have we haven't we can't actually use
our panels yet because Kooskor Electric has not
installed the appropriate meter. Oh. Because what the
net meter does is that when you
are generating
electricity
and you're using it, that's fine. But if
you generate more electricity than you're using, it
will go back into the electric grid. And
then what the electric company do does is
(28:28):
they'll meter that as well. So when your
electricity comes into your house, that's they charge
you for that. Right? You they have a
meter that measures how much electricity you're using
and then you're charged for that amount of
electricity.
Well, if it goes the other way, then
they essentially have to pay you for the
electricity. That's the
(28:48):
they you pay at residential
rates.
They they will
when we when we pay for electricity, we
pay at residential rates. If they pay you
for electricity, they pay you at commercial rates,
which are lower, which is fine, which is
perfectly, I think, reasonable for them to charge
Okay. The the the commercial rates for when
you sell them electricity. Okay.
(29:10):
But it you have to have a special
meter that will measure that and that and
and that is called a net meter. Okay.
So But right now, you're not you can't
take advantage at all of your No. Of
your solar energy. We we can't because we
can't we can't connect it to our. Okay.
We there's no way to isolate our house
from the elect from the electric grid at
this point. Okay. So so that's why we
(29:32):
have we're waiting for the net meter to
be installed. And
I'm not an expert on this at all,
but Rob, my good friend from college Yes.
Worked for years for the Bonneville Power Administration.
Oh, okay. Okay. He was a lawyer. Still
is, I guess, but he's retired like we
are. Four times, maybe. Yeah. Go ahead.
Electric rates for different classes of users, like
(29:55):
residential and a couple of different grades of
commercial use are incredibly complicated.
Yeah. So
let's just say that we will get something
back
Yeah. From Kooskuri Electric Okay. Once we get
going. But we didn't do this to get
money back or whatever. And we also, don't
wanna be this will not allow us to
(30:16):
be completely off the grid. We couldn't run
everything
completely on those 15 solar panels based on
what we have in our house,
in terms of refrigerators and freezers and, you
know,
lights and Okay. Heaters. We have a a
split unit, electric split unit that we have.
We have wood too, but we but we
so we couldn't run all of that just
on the 15 panels. But it will allow
(30:38):
us to have the security for when we
do lose power to be able to Right.
Run our refrigerators and our freezers and things
like that. When you do lose power, I
assume
you start to cut back on what all
the unnecessary
Right. Yes. When won't you run-in the microwave
with a split unit. Oh, okay. Okay. If
if you're living totally with solar panels, you
cut back
(30:59):
Well All all my All the time. All
my light bulbs were fluorescent and Yeah. Like
that. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. That your home is
is new construction home. Is that right? Yes.
Right. Because I have a a lot of
questions well, some questions about
when people have an existing home.
Let's say they have a, a roof that's
ten years old. Mhmm.
(31:21):
People that put the solar panels on,
I I hope that they're,
they know a lot of roofing stuff
because I assume you don't wanna put solar
panels on a roof, I don't know, 10
let's say 15.
Would they They would probably say you need
to reroof for Exactly. They they they would
take the roof condition into consideration.
Okay. And that if there are some roofs
(31:44):
that and I don't know exactly which ones,
like, probably tile roofs. If you have, like,
a a tile roof, that probably is not
compatible
with, putting on solar panels. But there are
some roofs tiles that are not compatible, or
you may need to, like, say, reroute redo
your roof to make sure. But what we
did because we live up, say, up at
Gardner Ridge, and we're out in the in
the forest. And so we had to make
(32:05):
sure that that our,
home was gonna be,
as fire defensive
as as possible. Oh, that's So we have
a metal roof up there. A metal roof,
and we have hardy board,
paneling on the sides of the house. And
so so it's our house is relatively fireproof.
But the nice thing about the roof is
it's called standing seam metal roof. There's different
(32:26):
types of metal roofs. This is called standing
seam. So it has all these little ridges
that run Yeah. From the peak down. Well,
that makes it really easy to attach the
framework for the solar panels. They have these
little clamps that clamp to the standing seams.
So there was no holes drilled in our
roof to attach Wow. That's huge. For the,
solar panels. I was really worried about about
(32:48):
leaking, you know. Yeah. I asked him about
that and said, oh, well, with your style
roof, it's not a problem because we don't
have to drill any holes through the roof.
We just clamp these, clamps to the standing
seams. And it's also nice because it really
distributes the weight over pretty much most of
the roof,
for the weight of the solar panels.
If you have how many panels? 15? 15.
(33:09):
So and what what's the wattage on each
of those?
I don't
know the total wattage. No. Each each Yeah.
I don't I don't know. No. Yeah. I
I don't I don't I didn't have that
information with me. I but I was thinking
15 panels. You have
if you don't mind, what's the square footage
of your house? That's gotta be pretty good
size for 15 panels, doesn't it? Well, it's
(33:30):
on it's on the it's on the 30
by the 30 by 35
edition.
Yeah. Because that we our house is kinda
built in sections, And so we have this
new addition where the panels are. And so
it's essentially half of one side,
which is about so and the the whole
section is 30 by 35. So it's it's
the roof over half of that plus two
(33:51):
panels on the other side. Okay. And plus,
aren't the speaking of improvements as they go
along, I mean, and this is gonna hopefully
get in more improvements as they go. The
solar panels aren't as big as maybe they
used to be, let's say, ten or fifteen
years ago to accommodate
the I
I don't I don't to be honest, I
don't know what the size of panels Oh,
(34:12):
okay. How the size of panels have changed.
I don't know. All I know is that
they have gotten more efficient because they're made
of of a semiconductor type material, silicone or
something else, So that when the photons hit
it, it it essentially excites electrons,
which then creates direct current.
Yeah. I I I did look at that
a little bit on the research, and thank
you for mentioning that. What was the term
(34:34):
I had to look it up? Photovoltaic
effect. It's called photovoltaic
effect. You need a what do they call
it? Not a transfer. An an inverter. Inverter.
Yeah. So what happens is is that that
as this,
material
is hit by the light, the the the
the photons of the light, it causes electrons
to be excited. And when electrons are excited,
(34:55):
they wanna go somewhere. So that creates the
current. It's called direct current. Okay. Direct current.
So then but you have to have an
inverter because most of houses
that we have,
run on what's called alternating current or AC
current.
And that's because
back in the day,
because there was there was Thomas Edison and
(35:16):
Nikola Tesla.
These are the two big names in electricity.
Right? Okay. Thomas Edison
was the proponent of direct current. So he
he did direct current. That means, essentially, it
just it just flows in one direction, and
that's that's all it does. Like your car
battery. Yes. Your car battery gen is DC,
direct current. Right. Your
(35:36):
your batteries in all kinds of vehicles. Right.
Electric cars, computers,
LEDs, those are all direct current. Okay. But
but what happens is
direct current
tends to lose energy. It tends to lose
energy as it's transmitted for long distances.
So transmitting elect you know, we generate electricity
with our dams, but then we have to
transmit transmit electricity hundreds of miles to wherever
(35:56):
it's gonna be used. Well, direct current tends
to lose energy really fast.
But,
the alternating current, AC,
because you can have very, very high voltage
and low amperage,
it transmits distances much further.
So it's much more efficient to have AC
current
Okay. Over long distances at long distances. At
(36:18):
high voltages, which is why those towers are
way the heck up in the air Right.
Because they're running at something some of them
are as much what did I say?
Well, like a power substation might be 480
volts,
and then you'd keep doubling that over distances
to get long distances. And then your transformer
(36:39):
that you have over transfer
steps it down
to your 110
volts at your house. You know, I gotta
tell you, my dad
worked he was like an electrician for the
railroad,
and I didn't get any of his chromosomes
or whatever.
Oh, it's the mercury.
Whoop. Maybe it's
(37:00):
But I have watched tons of videos trying
to explain that. Isn't it funny how it
doesn't compute in my brain very It's well,
it's not it's not intuitively
obvious.
Oh, boy. Not to me. Well, it's not
it's not intuitively obvious. But but the thing
is that places like
you know
what did you say you were in? Smith
River,
(37:20):
Pacific Power? Pacific Power. Okay. Pacific Power, Kooskuri
Electric. Right. They all have an elaborate network
of wires
and transformers
and substations
and Yeah. You know, it's an elaborate network,
and they manage that
to provide
safe, reliable electricity
(37:43):
under all kinds of conditions,
and it's not simple.
I'll I'll vouch for that. Yeah. You know,
it's not simple. And No. It's not. And
solar
power
is an entire you know, at large scale,
is an entirely new ballgame.
(38:05):
Yeah. It really is. And and
they are
And there are people who wanna interfere with
that ballgame too that,
that are against renewable energy, I suppose, to
keep the oil company. In fact, Trump has
even said we have to keep these all
all Right. Beautiful oil workers working. Working. Working.
Right? Well, it's just gonna make sure the
(38:26):
world is really, really leaving us behind. You
know, just this year in '20 well, just
in 2024,
The United Kingdom
closed down its last coal fired power plant.
Wow.
They now have
more energy being generated by wind and solar.
Yeah. And,
and then We're we're behind in that. Yes.
(38:47):
I think. Yes.
Sadly sadly and dramatically behind. Okay.
Yeah. But the the
well, the and so one of the reasons
why we wanted to do solar was not
just so we would get off the greater
whatever, but also to really make
essentially, to make a statement that we support
(39:07):
green energy,
that we want to reduce our dependence on
fossil fuels,
and that that this is something this is
something that we can do
to,
to essentially
reduce our need,
and use of fossil fuels. Yes. And I'm
going through my little for that, for putting
all that money into That yeah. It it
(39:28):
is expensive. I mean, that's one of the
drawbacks. There's lots of advantages to solar power,
but one of the drawbacks is that it
is it is expensive to install. Yeah. And
if you want to
do storage, the batteries are very expensive. So
what we did in our house is, again,
we put the solar panels up, but we
also got a very large storage battery. It's
called it's it's a Franklin battery. There's a
couple of different,
(39:49):
companies that make batteries.
One of them is Tesla. I wouldn't didn't
wanna go with Tesla.
So this is a Franklin battery, and it's
a company that's based in San Francisco. So
I was I was concerned it was a
a Chinese
company, but it's not. Alright. And our solar
panels are also made, in The United States
as well. How huge is that? Yeah. So
that was really cool. And I did go
(40:09):
back and forth on pluses and negatives.
The I I put by the pluses huge,
clean renewable
energy Yes. Lower carbon
footprint,
much better overall environmentally, which is is huge.
And before I forget, another little shout out
upon these solar panels as I discovered and
I didn't know. My hometown
(40:31):
of Sacramento
apparently was big launching the pioneer program to,
commercialize
the grid for rooftop solar. Yes. Wow. I
remember that. I'm there was a while ago.
A little not podog Sacramento. Capital of California.
Somebody told me a while back, and I
don't know if this is true or not,
that if you are building a house in
California now, it has to have some type
(40:53):
of
alternate energy.
I know. Photo potato or maybe hot water.
California, but I don't know that. I don't
know either.
But but, yeah, the person who told me
that wasn't very reliable. So Oh, well. It's
probably not. He's, he also told me that,
because Trump was complaining about the noise from
windmills, and I've been around some windmills. They
(41:14):
put windmills up about 10 miles from my
house in Alaska, and I used to go
up there to try to get an interesting
photograph.
And all I would hear,
you know, there was no jet roar and
no no noise at all. Yeah. They're they're
pretty quiet. Yeah. Yeah. And overall, solar is
got a pretty long lifespan
Yes. Yes. What I understand. Yeah. That's true.
(41:35):
The the panels won't last absolutely forever. They
too but that they usually, will last fifteen
to twenty five years depending on on the
panel Okay. Etcetera. And they're they're pretty hardy.
They
like, they said that, our panels are rated
for a 150 mile an hour winds,
which we don't I've never seen that at
our place.
Maybe 70. Not yet. Yeah. Really. Either. Right.
(41:56):
You know? Even though about storage, when when
I was doing this,
I may have been unavailable. All I knew
about was golf cart batteries, which are
awful to try to keep up with, but
that that was it. But I could run
Well, these are these are lithium batteries, and
and, you know, part of the problem with
the other disadvantages
is that it it requires mining of lithium
(42:17):
and other rare metals. And so and there
is the the cost essentially, the environmental cost
of the mining and the production
of the batteries. And so it's not like
it's like it's zero energy
used. But but, again, same thing with electrical
cars. It it costs it it really is
more it takes more energy to to build
an electric car than it does to do
(42:39):
a gas powered car. But what happens then
is you you don't use the the fossil
fuels for transportation.
So the electric car eventually will have a
net lower
environmental cost
as you as you use it. Right. Trade
offs. I think we're talking about trade offs
there. Yes. Yes. I mean, if every let's
say it's gonna happen, but if everybody went
(42:59):
solar, there would be a huge Yes. Plus
for the environment. Yes. Now so back to
the you said the the panels last fifteen
to twenty years? Twenty to twenty five years.
Yes. So would you have to would people
have to go in and then think do
you replace all those panels, or do they
recharge those panels?
Or what would be the It's actually gonna
it would be a matter of replacement.
(43:21):
Okay.
But I would hold out the hope
that, the replacement
panels would last
easily as at least as long and perhaps
be even more efficient. And then by then,
they might have more improvements even, you know
Right. Even there. Hopefully, that that would happen.
And it's quite possible that they may be
because there it's a it's silicone or some
(43:42):
other material between glass plates.
I'm assuming they wouldn't have to replace the
glass plates, that they would just have to
replace the material
in inside. Okay. Because eventually,
it it would probably, you know, stop being
as conductive for producing electrons. Okay. Yeah. Okay.
Do you do you know of any,
movements of foot to replace the lithium batteries
(44:02):
or to do something other than lithium? There
there are,
I can't remember the name of the they're
always looking for a better Mhmm.
Photovoltaic
Right. Material. Material.
And I don't know what's
it seems to me that gallium,
which is an element,
(44:24):
is is being experimented with, but I don't
know if it's any less bad than lithium
in terms of the environmental cost of mining
it and producing it. Can lithium be recharged
or reused? It can be recycled, and that's
Okay. That is I know when they take
a battery out of an electric car,
those go into,
PV
(44:45):
stations. And then it's not enough to run
a car, but it's Right. Yes. Yeah. Provide
energy. They can be used. And again reused
in different ways. Yeah.
That's something the technology is emerging and changing
almost day by day. Yeah. And
we're worried about, for example,
China's control of some key materials.
(45:06):
Anything that has been sent here and sold
and used here can be recycled here
if we just decide to do that. Part
of it is a matter of
renewable energy stuff or something. Yeah. Let me
just read you a little squib out of
a
out of a magazine called The Economist.
(45:27):
It's published in from London, and it's pretty
much
acknowledged as as fair Mhmm. And balanced.
A recent article said the scale of renewables
in China is too vast for the human
mind to grasp.
By the end of last year,
the country had installed 887
(45:48):
gigawatts
of solar power capacity,
which is almost double
Europe and America's capacity
combined.
Boy.
Wow.
They are selling solar panels
cheaply
all over the world
as the foot in the door
because if you buy their panels, you will
(46:09):
also buy
the other equipment that goes with it. And
their electric car maybe. And use it to
charge your Chinese electric car, but they will
also then be in a position to set
the standards
Yeah. For
this version of renewable energy.
I'm not here to push China. I I
(46:29):
Well But I am going to say that
we are Push reality is what's going on.
Pushing reality,
pushing the fact that
we are falling behind
and our solar panels on our roof are
sort of a statement to say, let's do
this Yeah. Here
with people that are here. Right. Do do
(46:50):
you guys see other people up
I haven't been up to Gardner Ridge, but,
are there other people up there doing solar
panels? Yes. There are several I don't know
how many how many of them are, but
I know at least at least one and
maybe several who are off the grid who
have solar panels. It's a fairly large array
as you get up at the top on
the left side. Right. Totally off grid? Totally
(47:11):
off grid. Yeah. I know this. They said
that sometimes they have to run a generator
if they don't if it's been cloudy for
a long time or whatever to to to
to do their whole house. But Okay. But
yeah. So I know people up there who
are off the grid who have solar panels.
I could have run mine year round except
in Alaska courses where I live, there's, like,
four hours of daylight, and I've been put
much out. So, there
(47:33):
and I have
I guess the word is sympathy
for the electric power companies because they
enter into long term contracts with suppliers
of things like coal, natural gas Yeah. Oil
to run their generating system.
And as
solar takes over,
(47:54):
those long term contracts become a burden, not
a blessing.
Yeah. They it requires them to rethink their
whole operating model. And if you've signed a
long term contract,
by golly, it's a contract.
Yeah.
Then you're gonna still have to pay the
electric company just to keep that their infrastructure
going. And they deserve to be paid for
(48:14):
that infrastructure. It's it's expensive to maintain. Right.
It costs a lot of money to build
it in the first place, and
they play an important part
in our economy.
But
let's face the future, not the past. Yeah.
You know, we're unfortunately, I can't believe we're
almost running out of time. We got ten
minutes, but I wanted to give out the
(48:35):
text line again.
If you have questions or comments, (541)
661-4098.
And back to this, again,
not a
expert on this, but the coal plants, they're
horrible polluters,
horrible
as far as I know. And coal is
a finite resource. Yes.
(48:55):
Gonna run out, but not solar, hopefully.
Ten billion years.
I don't think we'll care. But No. No.
Yeah. But yeah. And
even and even natural gas is nonrenewable.
People people don't seem to understand. Yeah. Natural
gas essentially is is
that's what's being produced when we do fracking.
Yeah. Fracking is is produced by natural gas.
(49:17):
It's just pockets of gas that have been
produced over pressure and millions of years from,
you know, plants and animals as they get
compressed in the soil. That's how we produce
oil and natural gas. So those are nonrenewable
resources, both natural gas and and oil. Whereas,
solar and wind are renewable
resources. So if I don't think people fully
(49:38):
understand that that we will run out of
natural gas.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that The United States
is the greatest producer of natural gas in
the world. Okay. And we have,
the largest deposits of natural gas, under our
the Continental
United States. Wow. Is there an estimate how
long that Eighty four years. Eighty four years.
Wow. Four years. That's what I'm trying to
(49:59):
say. One of the one of the problems
when they talk about global warming and climate
change. Everything is
is a hundred years from now or seventy
five years from now. And we all should
be looking at your birthday and say, sorry.
Really? Well, you know, I don't think we
have eighty four years to wait is the
problem Yeah. On the four I mean, you
know, depending on who you talk to, we've
reached the tipping point or we're close to
(50:19):
the tipping point. But Right. But the last
the the the convention that was just held
of to talk about
global warming, they reached no new conclusions.
They're the the the groups of the the
nations that met did not decide to Kicking
the ball or whatever they call it down
the road. Right. Kicking the can down the
road. And The United States didn't even attend.
Oh my lord. The United States did not
even attend. Yeah. That's So that's
(50:41):
No. He's warning he's warning other countries that
they're destroying
their economy and destroying their country by Yeah.
Paying attention to renewable. I wanna jump back
real quick to the lithium batteries. Yes.
Does China
produce a lot of those? Is that what's
going on? Yeah. There's a lot of lithium
in that China mines. Yes. Okay. And then
(51:03):
now I might be off here, but I
thought I read a report that's around the
Salton Sea somewhere down there in Southern California.
Mhmm. Pretty barren out that way. Mhmm. But
I think that they're trying to get lithium
There is lithium. There are lithium deposits. There
are lithium deposits in The United States as
well. Yes. Okay. Yes. But I think China
has developed their lithium you know, mining their
(51:24):
lithium into more to a greater degree than
United States has. I don't know who has
more. I don't know if we have a
lot of lithium, we just haven't mined it,
or we don't have a lot of lithium.
I don't know. Okay. Well, the and the
real
kicker in that is,
again,
once
lithium batteries are not just a chunk of
lithium
(51:44):
with two wires sticking out.
They are They aren't me, but that's that's
a They are a complex, highly technological
Right. Development.
Right. And
one would
hope, and the depart
there are contracts being considered by the Department
of Energy
to companies who will
(52:04):
reprocess
lithium
into usable,
to be reused.
It doesn't disappear.
It's just that that complex battery structure degrades
over time. Yeah.
Oh, there's a text. I think we have
a text if I can
pull this. I I saw just a a
quick thing. I didn't get to read the
(52:25):
whole thing about, solo panels
that develop energy in the dark.
No.
No. Haven't
read one. Okay. It it was a YouTube
thing, and maybe that's why I didn't watch
it. Yeah.
There's a lot of stuff on YouTube. Okay.
Before Some of it's true. Before we run
out of time, I'll get to this text.
Okay. To return to the topic
(52:47):
of local recycling,
recycling can save you money. By recycling, I
was able to discontinue
trash service.
Every six to eight weeks, I take my
recyclables
and one black garbage bag to CPR
on
Carpenterville Road.
I'm only charged $14
for the black garbage bag.
Recyclables
are taken for free.
(53:08):
That's right. So thank you to Texter for
Yeah. That's that's very good. Yeah. Yeah. Do
do we know anything about what actually happens
to recyclables? You know, you you see,
reports on the news now and then that
they're
in some tropical island someplace dumped in a
It's spotty. Yeah. There are some things that
are recyclable and easy to recycle. I have
(53:28):
read articles that describe
cardboard
as brown gold. Uh-huh. There are people stealing
cardboard
to be recycled.
They come to my house about once every
two weeks and steal my cardboard. Yeah. There
are other items that are very difficult to
recycle. Aluminum is very easy to recycle. Yes.
Aluminum is is very easy. But these plastic
(53:48):
They're probably the worst, aren't they? The plastic
Ones and twos. These Ones and twos are
because they they're some of the products that
we use
are actually generated from that type of plastic.
Like, they're, you know
You can see it on some packaging that
says, you know,
contains
Recycled plastic. Yes. 30% recycled plastic. So, you
(54:11):
know, you're ahead of the game by 30%.
You've still used 70%
derived from
oil, natural gas, and that. But,
like, at the beginning, we said every little
bit helps.
A while back, I saw a news item
where
supermarkets
or stores
were
(54:32):
you could buy shampoo
in a bottle that you brought in yourself.
Yes. My my brother does that in Portland.
We definitely don't want glass shampoo
things, but if I could bring the same
one back, how many broken bottles of the
shower I think that would work even here.
I mean, look at how many people
bring their own bags to Fred Myers. It's
kind of rare to see somebody take them
(54:52):
one of theirs. So
I always forget. It's in the behind my
seat in the car. I go back out
and get it. I really do. I can
I can have the I have the basket
half full?
Yeah.
Yeah. But, yeah,
I would be happy to use all my
plastic things over and over again. In fact,
one of the most Just one minute. Go
ahead. I just wanted to talk about, think
(55:13):
people may have heard of balcony solar panels.
Have you heard about balcony
or plug and play solar panels? Okay. These
are small small solar panels that you can
just they're you don't have to attach them
to anything. You can you can if you
have a balcony, you can kinda hang them
off your balcony, let the sun hit them,
or you can if you if you live
on one level, you can stick them outside
(55:34):
and, or whatever.
They don't have to be permanently attached.
And and you just plug them into your
outlet, and it will run electricity
into your into your house.
Wow. And these, I didn't know about that.
They are they they essentially are really, really,
used in Germany. Germany has millions of these
out there now.
(55:55):
And,
and but they're they're illegal in in Oregon
due to regulation purposes because
because you just start you you That's not
the best way to put electricity in your
house. Well By plugging it in like that.
But it Well, it it well, anyway. But
it it does work. And I'd say that
they they are they are they are used
in Germany, and they they are legal in
the state of Utah.
(56:16):
Utah has has made them legal.
And but they're relatively cheap because, you know,
one of the big deals is we spent
a lot of money to get solar panels
installed on our house, but these are relatively
cheap. And so anybody can get one or
two of these, and and then they can
use them to generate some electricity.
Okay. And so but they are illegal right
now in Oregon.
When I first got my electric car, I
(56:37):
envisioned setting up a solar
array outside where I park it, but that
uses a lot of power. I would probably
take your solar array to charge.
Yeah. That that's true. So but I know
a person in in Milwaukee who has solar
panels, and he he has enough solar panels
to to charge his electric vehicles. He has
two electric vehicles. He charges with his solar
(56:58):
panels.
Well, so in the last couple of minutes,
both obviously,
both you,
Jim and Louise, would encourage people to get
solar. If it's possible, yes. And, yes, it's
a high
cost Front cost. Initial upfront cost. Yeah. But
it should be a big savings down the
road. Right. And if you don't do a
(57:19):
battery,
half the cost of our of our solar
installation was the battery. Oh, I'm gonna say,
you don't have to have You don't have
to have a battery. You can just have
solar panels. It's just that it's nice to
be able to store some of that energy
so if you have a storm
and and you can still have a lot
of energy. Yeah. But anyway, you don't have
to have a battery. Okay.
Well, wow. We've covered
(57:39):
veterinary,
a little bit of religion, which is always
great, and,
solar panels. So we jumped around a little
a lot today, but we really enjoyed having
you guys here. Really appreciate that. Yes. Thank
you very much. I knew you would be
interesting guests when I saw both of you
at the oh, that's where I want to
SoCan. It's okay.
(58:01):
SoCan is every The first Tuesday of every
month. Yes. It's a You bet. And I
missed the last one. Group of people that
are interested in the environment getting together and
talking
to,
Bill Gorham. Bill Gorham, who is
Fantastic himself. Yeah. He's
yeah. He has a PhD in this stuff
and he
does a lot of work and he's
(58:25):
crazy about environmental stuff. I know there's a
better word than that, but it didn't come
to me.
Crazy about the environment. Sounds good to me.
It's in the library, so if you're not
doing anything on the first
Tuesday
of the month, then what time does this
start? 05:15
for conversation and 05:30 for the meeting. Yeah.
Good group.
Thank you, Jim and Louise. Thank you very
(58:45):
much. That was a great Thanks for having
us. Oh, we'll have you back, I'm sure.
Nice.
Well, hello again, KCIW
listeners, and welcome to Curry Cafe.
I'm volunteer Rick McNamer.
Every Sunday from three to four, your host,
Ray Gary, puts together a panel of guests
to discuss various topics of interest.
Listeners can participate by texting questions or comments
to
(541)
(00:25):
661-4098.
Again, that's (541)
661-4098.
Now a little,
different, before we launch into it, I wanted
to get a couple of shout outs. The
last couple three weeks, I believe, we had
some hiccups, so we've been not going live,
but today, we are live. So, yeah, you
(00:46):
can check-in.
And we missed a couple of shout outs
to,
number one, belatedly,
November 11, Veterans Day.
So just wanted to give a shout out
and a thank you to all the veterans.
And
November being Native American Heritage Month, we, just
wanted to give a shout out to that.
This is a big tribal area here and,
(01:08):
really well deserved to have a month to
honor them.
Okay? So here's Ray to tell us about
today's show. Okay. We have a couple of,
different sort of guests today that are gonna
talk about themselves.
And that's about all I could think to
introduce. So why don't we just start with
you, Robert, and
continue around the table
clockwise
(01:30):
and give us a little
30
words or less,
whatever.
My name is Jim Abbott, and I'm a
retired Lutheran pastor.
I've retired three times already,
and I'm back at work helping out a
church in
Crescent. Crescent City, California.
There are Episcopalians
down there, but I went to a seminary
(01:52):
that was a Lutheran seminary that lived inside
an Episcopal seminary. So I'm kind of a
Luther palean.
You combine that. I combine that. That's great.
And,
that's what I've been doing for about the
last twenty three, twenty four years. Okay. We'll
we'll get back to you in a minute
to find out what the difference between those
(02:12):
religions are. Oh, not much, to be real
honest.
But it wouldn't work with Catholic, I guess.
That's just We're trying. Oh, okay.
Oh, I'm Louise Abbott. I'm married to to
Jim Abbott for fifty years now and counting.
Nice. Well, happy. Thank you. So Fiftieth.
Yeah. But was he arrested shortly before or
(02:34):
after you No. We're just Oh, you older
than we look. Okay.
But, I am,
a retired university professor, but I have a
PhD in developmental biology and a DVM degree,
so I'm also a veterinarian.
And for the past thirty five years before
I retired, I taught at various veterinary schools,
(02:56):
first at Washington State and then University of
Illinois, and then I did, twenty my last
twenty four years of teaching were at Texas
A and M University in Bryan College,
Station, Texas. Wow. And so but retired. I
grew up in Oregon and in Lake Oswego.
So I told Jim when we got married
fifty years ago that we would be retiring
to Oregon and we did, about seven years
(03:18):
ago.
Just I have to ask real quick, how
long were you both in Texas
for how long? Yes. That's where Jim, first,
became a pastor was in Texas. Oh, okay.
And, and well, I was teaching at Texas
A and M University. Okay. Yeah. Alright.
Alright. So how do you help out on
a church?
This the church in Crescent City is doing
(03:39):
what they call a discernment
process.
It's a small congregation, and they're trying to
figure out what's next for them as a
as a group.
They're paired up with five other churches and
each one of those churches has what they
call a companion to help them through the
process, and that's the job I'm doing there.
I'm
moderating some discussions and talking to the people,
(04:02):
trying to figure out what's next for that
group.
So are they,
like,
sharing the same building or
No. Different I imagine there's enough difference in
the philosophies to Actually have different religion.
Lutherans and Episcopalians
about eight or, oh, more than that. I
was in seminary
when they signed a national agreement to share
(04:24):
pastors. We have what they call pulpit fellowship.
So I am, with the permission of the
local bishop,
authorized to perform all the duties of an
Episcopal priest,
and Episcopal priests are allowed to perform all
the duties of a Lutheran pastor, and there's
not a heck of a lot of difference
between the two.
Well,
it's like the obvious denominational.
(04:46):
What? Multi denominational. It's like multi denominational.
We Which seems to make the most sense
Right. To me.
Part of the reason that there are two
separate
denominations is entirely historical circumstance. Okay. It's not
theological difference. Okay. There are some theological differences,
which
(05:07):
with a lot of,
blood, sweat, and words
were overcome before both of the national assemblies
of those two denominations
passed resolutions allowing this to happen. Okay.
So It it just sounds so
brotherly love, no infighting between different denominations, which
apparently can happen in some Yeah. Churches, but
(05:29):
it doesn't sound like it happens Well, actually
where you're at. What happened is among the
Lutherans,
couple three, four hundred churches left the denomination
because they weren't happy about it. Oh,
wow.
Okay. With a church that had over 5,000
congregations,
the numbers were not really significant.
Okay.
So with leaving the the the fold would
(05:52):
be things like gay marriage and Yeah. Oh,
that was that was even bigger. Uh-huh. The
agreement to share with the Episcopalians, couple 300
left, many, many more Lutheran churches have left
over the relationship between
faith and
sexuality.
And personally, speaking only personally because I'm not
authorized to speak on behalf of the entire
(06:14):
denomination,
I
see it as an issue
of theology that I have figured out
and following the advice and doing some reading
of some very fine theologians.
Consider that
I'm much more happy with two people of
(06:35):
the same
biological
gender
who love, honor, respect, and cherish each other
than some guy who walked into my office
and he wants to get married for the
fourth time to another different woman.
That makes sense. Yeah. Well, it does. It
does. So that's kind of where I am.
That is where I am. Not kind of,
(06:55):
that is where I am. I believe that
the way you treat each other and the
way you respect each other,
the way you participate in a community that
treats and respects others
with dignity
and grace
and generosity
is much more important. Well,
I can understand,
(07:16):
the churches, especially
the ones that stick closer to fundamentalism, I
guess,
having having this problem with same sex relationship,
but I just cannot understand
how politicians have
a have a problem with it.
They're using it Well, I'm sorry. I do
understand they're pandering to a problem. They're pandering
(07:36):
to they're using it as a weapon
in
among people to gin up their base Yeah.
If that's still expression is still used? Yeah.
I believe so. I believe so. To motivate
We can use it here if we want
to, if it's our show. Okay.
Feel feel free to coin any expressions you
bear to. No. I better keep it safe
(07:57):
and sane. Sane? Okay.
No. They they they're using that.
And, honestly,
there
are quite a there are kind of two
major differences in the way you read the
Bible.
You can read it literally word for word
Mhmm. And claim that there are no errors
of either fact or history contained therein,
(08:20):
or you can read it as a series
of experiences between God and the people of
God,
and you take the Bible as a whole
and don't focus on individual words or single
verses, but take the whole message from beginning
to
end and say
God's intention for humanity
(08:41):
is a
kingdom of love and justice
where each individual flourishes to the best of
their ability.
And on a similar subject, why,
politicians and some churches get so upset about
sex change
operations or
(09:02):
procedures. And that to me sounds like a
biological thing from with a little bit I
know about it. I mean, people were born
with these
parts that weren't quite
I I have known
on a fair fairly well
a couple of people who are who have
changed gyms.
(09:22):
And at least one of them
that I knew
is a is a
much more comfortable
and a really a much nicer person as
a man than he was as a woman.
Yeah.
Well, you can yeah. There's a if there's
underlying frustration you have, then absolutely that would
(09:44):
be the case. But that's something that really
needs to be worked out on a very
detailed personal level with a spiritual
adviser. And medical adviser. And medical adviser. And
it's not a it's not a walk in
the office one way and walk out the
other. Wait a minute. Did didn't you hear
that kids were going to school, little Billy
was going to school, and mom was kissing
him and hugging him? Have a nice day,
(10:05):
Billy.
And the next time she saw him, he
was a girl? You didn't you didn't you
didn't catch that guy?
Missed that one. That was weird. We missed
that. Well, see, we don't watch a lot
of TV. Okay.
We don't actually have a working TV in
our house, so we must have missed it.
Okay. This was actually being said, not quite
like that, but almost verbatim. Let's do it.
(10:25):
Well, listen Oh, without the parents' consent. That's
the other thing. Okay. Okay. Now we're gonna
do a pretty big one eighty here, but
that's okay. This is all in and it's
great stuff, and I do love that message.
I do. I think we all love that
message.
So Louise is here also to talk about
again, this is a one eighty. I guess
the one eighty is correct.
(10:45):
Solar panels.
Solar panels in van, that,
that gets bounced around a lot. And I
have tons of questions, but, Louise, why don't
you go ahead and give us your quick
synopsis about what your your both of yours
experiences
with solar panels. Before we do that, could
we have her total of her story as
(11:06):
to why she
chose the field she did and chose That's
part of the whole thing. Okay. You bet.
Okay. Go ahead, Louise. Okay. The the before
we get to solar panels,
I, I've always been interested in biology. And
when I was in eighth grade, I had
a really great biology teacher, and
I said, Wow, this is really interesting. And
(11:26):
I said, You know, you're teaching us stuff
that's really, really cool. And he said, Yeah,
this is how they teach in college. I
said, Well, okay, that's what I wanna do
when I grow up, is I wanna be
a college professor
and teach biology. And then when I got
into,
college and I decided what I really wanted
to do was teach in a veterinary school.
I really I loved animals and I loved
(11:47):
teaching, and I said, how can I put
these together? And I said, wow. I could
I could teach in a veterinary school. So
I I earned my PhD first and then
I went to veterinary school,
at Washington State. And while I was there,
one of the biology one of the anatomy
professors left, so they asked me to
to quit my program. I was a year
into it, quit my program, just become a
(12:08):
university professor, teach anatomy. I said, no, no.
I wanna finish my my DVM degree. So
I was a part time veterinary student, part
time,
anatomy professor
for for five years at Washington State University,
and I had no idea at the time
how unusual that was to be able to
be a, professor and a student at the
same time.
But anyway, so, I, finished up my DVM
(12:29):
degree and then,
for re various reasons, then went to University
of Illinois to teach there for six years.
Didn't like it so much, so then went
to Texas A and M to to teach,
there. So I taught anatomy, histology, embryology.
I also did research in developmental neuroscience, looking
at how,
(12:50):
heavy metals affected brain developments. That was my
research component for what I did.
And then I retired.
Now I'm back in Oregon. I would say
this is a pretty full life up to
now.
Wow. That's fantastic. Speaking of brain capacities and
things that affect them, are there heavy metals
floating around in America right now? Well We
(13:11):
seem to be doing a lot of very
crazy things. Well, yeah. There there are a
lot of heavy metals. Most of the heavy
metals that we, are exposed to are in
what we eat and drink. I mean, there
will be some things in air pollution as
well, but but the one of the metals
that I studied a lot was with mercury,
which we can get from consuming fish, particularly
ocean fish. Yeah. And so mercury is very,
(13:34):
the developing brain is very sensitive to the
very low levels of mercury. What it causes
is is the the the neurons, the brain
cells themselves will not develop properly so that
you can't get good connections between so the
neurons won't talk together
very well, and so you get then,
developmental delays in terms of of development of
the brain and and and incapacities of the
(13:55):
brain to develop You're sounding pretty familiar right
now to,
a lot of what's going on in this
country. Yeah. Really.
So, yeah, I think we're all eating too
much fish, Maybe that's what chemtrails are.
Let's not get into chemtrails.
Well, you know, god, it's how sad that
is. You know, we're always, for a long
time, told to eat more seafood, eat more
(14:18):
fish, which I do. But, yeah. And and
this has to do with the pollution, I
guess. Yes. Right. Massive pollution that we're still
on. Mercury,
PCBs,
dioxins, those are all things all kinds of
of toxicants that you can find in fish
and and other foods as well. Actually,
even,
soil mercury will come in in soils and
(14:38):
then,
it can actually be incorporated into some of
our plants. Like, some rice some rice in
some areas of the world will have higher
levels of mercury, in it than we'd expect
it to. So plants too. Can I get
Does the plastics come into this at all?
I mean, we Well, plastics, microplastics in particular,
the little tiny tiny, tiny particles of microplastics
get into everywhere. They they get into our
(14:59):
water and then they can be incorporated,
either into,
plants or they will then be consumed also
by small animals, which are consumed by large
animals, you know, that the whole the whole,
you know, scale of of, a pattern of
eating in terms of small things being eaten
by the bigger things. Anyway, so we will
we consume much of the microplastics we consume,
(15:19):
will be in what we eat and also
what we drink. For example,
a number of different types of tea bags
will,
have when you use them, you do tea
bag in your hot water, it'll actually dissolve
microplastics,
depending on how the tea bag is made
Mhmm. Into the water, and then you consume
it. So we consume microplastics all the time
Yeah. What we drink. I consider that to
(15:40):
be the death knell.
What now? The death knell? Yes. What, of
the planet? Yeah.
These plastics are getting in more and more
things. Well, they're not coming out, and we're
not doing anything to improve it. So Right.
Yeah. The that yeah. They're everywhere. And and,
you know, it's it's just destroying our our
aquatic life because they're consuming the plastics and
then they die. And Yeah. It's it's really
(16:01):
a it's really something to be concerned about.
These No. I think you're gonna wind up
in the gullet of a, something or other
somewhere in the, Southeast houses for a little
bit about I mean, they've even found them
on the I'm gonna go deep here, pun
intended, I guess, the Marianas Trench with the
animals that live down there. They found them
(16:22):
The the microplastics. Microplastics. Yes. In the Antarctic.
There it's everywhere.
Okay. Yeah.
Well, we're bouncing around. We're covering a lot
of sun. Yes. Everyday's growth. If you have
a quick comment Okay. Since we've been so
so,
Eclectic?
No.
Good one. Depressed about Oh, depressed. Do do
you see anything for that in the future?
(16:44):
Of An improvement or a way to improve
it?
We have to like, Steve mentioned what's already
out there. You know, people say that one
individual can't do anything, but
it only works if every if individuals do
actually do something. So my thought is is
that every individual should try
to reduce the use of plastics. I mean,
(17:05):
that's what we do in our household is
is I try not to,
buy water and bottles. I refuse to drink
from these things. Yeah. But anyway, the point
is is that that I think as an
individual, we try to do what we can
to reduce
and recycle
and that sort of thing. So, you know
The old adage, every little bit helps. It
does. It does. And so if if everybody
(17:25):
did a little bit, it would be a
really important thing. So Right. To just to
reuse the reuse what you've got or, you
know, don't don't, you know, bring your your
cloth bags instead of getting plastic bags
and things like that. I think that's that's
what I try to do, and I think
if everybody
tried to do that, it would it would
it would help. How do we make that
common sense? I I live in a community
(17:47):
where we all have our garbage cans out
on garbage day on a
online there. It's about a dozen of them.
Every now and then, a bear will decide
that they don't look good like that. And
when a bear gets into some, it doesn't
just knock it over. That's right. It you
know, it's a 100 square yards.
But in in all of this, there's a
whole bunch of of plastic always, aluminum cans,
(18:09):
things that are not only easily
recycled but are effectively recycled. And
it seems like I may be the only
one in my community that even cares about
that. And I'm Well, yeah. Recycling is important,
and I think
and,
you know, because now they take fives.
CTR now takes plastics, ones, two, and fives.
They will take fives now.
(18:30):
And so and and then they'll take the
tin cans and they'll take the paper and
they'll take the cardboard.
So we we we live way up on
Gardner Ridge, and so we have to come
down to town. But we we do our
recycling. And so we just have a bin
at our house and every couple weeks we
we take it down and we we take
all of our, if we have aluminum cans,
then then those go to,
(18:52):
the, South Coast Humane
Society Yeah. For their, recycling Good organization.
Yeah. And so so I it's it's it's
it takes a little bit of an effort,
but if you kinda get used to doing
it and you and you get make a
pattern of it, it it makes it a
little bit easier. I'm not sure that too
many people who don't recycle are not doing
it because of the amount of work there
(19:12):
is, but that they just think it's all
nonsense.
They don't believe in a global warming's a
hoax. Well and we have There's a lot
of, yeah, misinformation out there that that I
mean,
we've had the last ten years of of
recorded history have been the hottest
of recorded of the last so and next
year will probably only be hotter on average.
(19:34):
Now people say, oh, but we had such
a cold spring or whatever. Well,
locally,
you know, you you can't just look at
the local,
Not looking at weather. You're looking at climate.
You had to look at you had to
climate globally. Right. Globally. Yes. Yeah. I I
just I seem to remember living in the
valley, Sacramento Valley where I came from. They're
talking about the droughts and it's a rain
one day, and everybody's like, well, see, we
(19:55):
know we got rain. Yeah. There's no drought.
Yeah. Any weather that brought this the
the snowball into Oh, god. Yeah. That too.
That too. With global warming. So before we
go on, and we haven't even touched the
main subject, but we will. Okay. But I
just wanna give out the text line again.
(541)
661-4098.
So
(20:16):
are we ready to Yes. To delve Okay.
Into the maybe if one of you has
a,
sick
dog out there or something, we could get
a diagnosis. I don't know. I'm not licensed
to practice, I'm Oregon. We're not to that
comment from from mister Ray. This is a
this is an undisclosed location.
(20:36):
Okay, Louise. Go ahead.
Well, Jim, why don't you go ahead and
and just explain
why
why we why we decided to do this
now and and what we were thinking about
because he he kinda
he kinda snowballed this first. Yes.
Currently
and until December 31,
there is an income tax credit
(20:58):
available
for installing solar equipment.
And so
we kind of put this off as Louise
mentioned earlier. We talked to our builder about
it, and he was not too enthused about
including that in the original building.
So we kind of, spent our time and
money between then and now on other projects,
(21:20):
But then we decide I kind of said,
well, if we're gonna do it, we need
to do it. Yeah. And given the current
political climate, it's not gonna come back again
in the next two years probably. For sure,
and I believe. Yes.
So,
and I spent,
as I mentioned before maybe, I've retired three
times now,
and I'm working on number four.
(21:42):
From August
2023
till April,
I served as the interim pastor
at a church in Medford, Oregon.
So I commuted back and forth, and Medford
is Not every day, but just Not every
day. I did, like, four there and three
here. Or Yeah. A trip to Medford is
excruciating, but go ahead.
(22:04):
And you should see the solar panels on
houses over there. Oh, I'd really. They are,
in the clutches of
Pacific Power Mhmm.
Which,
derives a significant part of their electricity. That's
who I have in Smith River, by the
way. Pacific Power. Yeah. Pacific Power. And I
believe they get at least a significant portion
(22:25):
of their electrons from coal fired power plants.
Mhmm. So electricity is not cheap in Medford.
Right.
While we here in Brookings are blessed with,
Kooskuri Electric, which is an electric cooperative. They're
not in it for the money. And they
get a lot of their electricity
from the federal,
dams that have been built over the last
(22:47):
seventy, eighty years. So we have hydroelectric power,
which is
renewable
every time it rains.
And,
but on the other hand,
that's not gonna go forever and it's not
going to meet future needs.
We need to
Electric power usage is going up
(23:10):
and,
electric power that comes over those wonderful wires
up in the mountains where we are sometimes
doesn't come over the wires. Yeah. In the
wintertime. In the wintertime especially. They try very
hard and they do a very good job
of restoring electricity, but we can go several
days without.
And so I said, well,
let's look into solar power because a lot
(23:32):
of people I knew in Medford,
have it and like it.
We got a hold of a outfit in
Medford,
and they
worked with us. They sent a person out
to estimate,
what would be involved. As we mentioned earlier,
that's the guy that used that grew up
in Brookings
that had to go to Medford to get
(23:52):
a job with a future.
Mhmm.
He took a lot of pictures, made a
lot of notes, did a lot of measurements.
They came back with a bid. We said
go for it. So we put solar panels
on our roof
and a large battery storage battery in the,
part of the garage, actually. Oh.
And they said, well, this usually takes six
(24:14):
to eight weeks.
They called us about a week later and
said, we had a cancellation. Can we start
tomorrow?
Oh, hello. Come on down or come on
up. Yeah. That's exactly right. No. No. No.
Right. And so the first day, there were
four or five people working, two of them
actually installing the panels on the roof,
and two more,
electricians
doing the rest of the wiring to complete
(24:36):
the system. Okay.
So how how long did it take to
put that up?
Two days. Two days. Two days. Two days.
Now we have what we
solar panels come as these units. And so
I don't know if it's an exact standard
size, but these are look like Okay. Any
solar panel you'd probably see on a roof.
So we have 15 of those solar panels
(24:58):
installed
and,
on on our roof.
And, then they they all connect to a
a battery, which then is connected to our
electric system. So if the power goes out,
then the battery the electricity will automatically
switch to the battery. So the solar panels
power the battery that once the batteries when
(25:18):
the and then the battery will charge our
house, run the electricity to our house. So
let's boy. And this is way above my
pay grade with electrical stuff, but I'm gonna
go there anyway. Mhmm. So the power goes
out, let's say, for a week
where Right. How long will that battery power
your house?
Roughly.
Roughly.
Well, what do we figure? Two and a
(25:38):
half days? Two and a half days without
recharging? Without recharging. Okay. But you gotta remember
that during any time when there's light, the
panels are
pouring the energy into the battery Right. Through
sunlight. Yes. Through sunlight. But even on a
cloudy day,
solar panels will charge. It just won't charge
as fast. So only really when there's no
light at all are these panels not charging.
(26:01):
Oh, okay. So some amount of light,
will charge those panels, but bright sunlight will
charge them faster. Okay. Okay? I I used
to have solar panels and, criteria was if
you if it made a shadow, if you
put your hand over the panel, and if
that was that you you were getting kind
of a jay down here? Not only not
only that, but
(26:21):
the fault photovoltaic
effect goes back to
early in the twentieth century? Yes. Oh. Okay.
Yes. So they knew that that light would
make
electrons
move around and go where you want them
to go.
Now efficiency
and the ability to work at low light
levels has improved dramatically
(26:42):
over the last
fifteen or twenty years, and there are people
working on it still trying to make it
more and more efficient,
have fewer panels on your roof for the
same amount of output, or get
output at lower light levels.
Right. Research continues,
and they are we've kind of hit an
inflection point
(27:03):
where
putting solar panels up now makes sense.
Okay. So you would encourage anyone
around even the because this area, well, you're
up above the Right. But even we know
people who who put solar panels even down
here in Brookings. Yeah. And and and, again,
some amount of light, it will charge those
(27:23):
it will charge those panels, and that will
create electricity that can be used in your
house. Now will it create all the electricity
you need? Maybe, maybe not. Depends on how
many panels you have and exactly, you know,
how they're positioned and things like that. Yeah.
But it will create some amount of electricity
that then can be used,
by whoever owns that home. And then theoretically,
(27:45):
if you generate more electricity than you're using,
it will go back into the electric grid.
K? Oh, that's right. Exactly. Actually helping
other people?
Or or Well, yes. Well, you send you
you send yeah. You send your the electricity
goes back to the electric grid grid. You
have what's called a a net meter. A
net meter
is one that the electric company has to
(28:05):
we have we haven't we can't actually use
our panels yet because Kooskor Electric has not
installed the appropriate meter. Oh. Because what the
net meter does is that when you
are generating
electricity
and you're using it, that's fine. But if
you generate more electricity than you're using, it
will go back into the electric grid. And
then what the electric company do does is
(28:28):
they'll meter that as well. So when your
electricity comes into your house, that's they charge
you for that. Right? You they have a
meter that measures how much electricity you're using
and then you're charged for that amount of
electricity.
Well, if it goes the other way, then
they essentially have to pay you for the
electricity. That's the
(28:48):
they you pay at residential
rates.
They they will
when we when we pay for electricity, we
pay at residential rates. If they pay you
for electricity, they pay you at commercial rates,
which are lower, which is fine, which is
perfectly, I think, reasonable for them to charge
Okay. The the the commercial rates for when
you sell them electricity. Okay.
(29:10):
But it you have to have a special
meter that will measure that and that and
and that is called a net meter. Okay.
So But right now, you're not you can't
take advantage at all of your No. Of
your solar energy. We we can't because we
can't we can't connect it to our. Okay.
We there's no way to isolate our house
from the elect from the electric grid at
this point. Okay. So so that's why we
(29:32):
have we're waiting for the net meter to
be installed. And
I'm not an expert on this at all,
but Rob, my good friend from college Yes.
Worked for years for the Bonneville Power Administration.
Oh, okay. Okay. He was a lawyer. Still
is, I guess, but he's retired like we
are. Four times, maybe. Yeah. Go ahead.
Electric rates for different classes of users, like
(29:55):
residential and a couple of different grades of
commercial use are incredibly complicated.
Yeah. So
let's just say that we will get something
back
Yeah. From Kooskuri Electric Okay. Once we get
going. But we didn't do this to get
money back or whatever. And we also, don't
wanna be this will not allow us to
(30:16):
be completely off the grid. We couldn't run
everything
completely on those 15 solar panels based on
what we have in our house,
in terms of refrigerators and freezers and, you
know,
lights and Okay. Heaters. We have a a
split unit, electric split unit that we have.
We have wood too, but we but we
so we couldn't run all of that just
on the 15 panels. But it will allow
(30:38):
us to have the security for when we
do lose power to be able to Right.
Run our refrigerators and our freezers and things
like that. When you do lose power, I
assume
you start to cut back on what all
the unnecessary
Right. Yes. When won't you run-in the microwave
with a split unit. Oh, okay. Okay. If
if you're living totally with solar panels, you
cut back
(30:59):
Well All all my All the time. All
my light bulbs were fluorescent and Yeah. Like
that. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. That your home is
is new construction home. Is that right? Yes.
Right. Because I have a a lot of
questions well, some questions about
when people have an existing home.
Let's say they have a, a roof that's
ten years old. Mhmm.
(31:21):
People that put the solar panels on,
I I hope that they're,
they know a lot of roofing stuff
because I assume you don't wanna put solar
panels on a roof, I don't know, 10
let's say 15.
Would they They would probably say you need
to reroof for Exactly. They they they would
take the roof condition into consideration.
Okay. And that if there are some roofs
(31:44):
that and I don't know exactly which ones,
like, probably tile roofs. If you have, like,
a a tile roof, that probably is not
compatible
with, putting on solar panels. But there are
some roofs tiles that are not compatible, or
you may need to, like, say, reroute redo
your roof to make sure. But what we
did because we live up, say, up at
Gardner Ridge, and we're out in the in
the forest. And so we had to make
(32:05):
sure that that our,
home was gonna be,
as fire defensive
as as possible. Oh, that's So we have
a metal roof up there. A metal roof,
and we have hardy board,
paneling on the sides of the house. And
so so it's our house is relatively fireproof.
But the nice thing about the roof is
it's called standing seam metal roof. There's different
(32:26):
types of metal roofs. This is called standing
seam. So it has all these little ridges
that run Yeah. From the peak down. Well,
that makes it really easy to attach the
framework for the solar panels. They have these
little clamps that clamp to the standing seams.
So there was no holes drilled in our
roof to attach Wow. That's huge. For the,
solar panels. I was really worried about about
(32:48):
leaking, you know. Yeah. I asked him about
that and said, oh, well, with your style
roof, it's not a problem because we don't
have to drill any holes through the roof.
We just clamp these, clamps to the standing
seams. And it's also nice because it really
distributes the weight over pretty much most of
the roof,
for the weight of the solar panels.
If you have how many panels? 15? 15.
(33:09):
So and what what's the wattage on each
of those?
I don't
know the total wattage. No. Each each Yeah.
I don't I don't know. No. Yeah. I
I don't I don't I didn't have that
information with me. I but I was thinking
15 panels. You have
if you don't mind, what's the square footage
of your house? That's gotta be pretty good
size for 15 panels, doesn't it? Well, it's
(33:30):
on it's on the it's on the 30
by the 30 by 35
edition.
Yeah. Because that we our house is kinda
built in sections, And so we have this
new addition where the panels are. And so
it's essentially half of one side,
which is about so and the the whole
section is 30 by 35. So it's it's
the roof over half of that plus two
(33:51):
panels on the other side. Okay. And plus,
aren't the speaking of improvements as they go
along, I mean, and this is gonna hopefully
get in more improvements as they go. The
solar panels aren't as big as maybe they
used to be, let's say, ten or fifteen
years ago to accommodate
the I
I don't I don't to be honest, I
don't know what the size of panels Oh,
(34:12):
okay. How the size of panels have changed.
I don't know. All I know is that
they have gotten more efficient because they're made
of of a semiconductor type material, silicone or
something else, So that when the photons hit
it, it it essentially excites electrons,
which then creates direct current.
Yeah. I I I did look at that
a little bit on the research, and thank
you for mentioning that. What was the term
(34:34):
I had to look it up? Photovoltaic
effect. It's called photovoltaic
effect. You need a what do they call
it? Not a transfer. An an inverter. Inverter.
Yeah. So what happens is is that that
as this,
material
is hit by the light, the the the
the photons of the light, it causes electrons
to be excited. And when electrons are excited,
(34:55):
they wanna go somewhere. So that creates the
current. It's called direct current. Okay. Direct current.
So then but you have to have an
inverter because most of houses
that we have,
run on what's called alternating current or AC
current.
And that's because
back in the day,
because there was there was Thomas Edison and
(35:16):
Nikola Tesla.
These are the two big names in electricity.
Right? Okay. Thomas Edison
was the proponent of direct current. So he
he did direct current. That means, essentially, it
just it just flows in one direction, and
that's that's all it does. Like your car
battery. Yes. Your car battery gen is DC,
direct current. Right. Your
(35:36):
your batteries in all kinds of vehicles. Right.
Electric cars, computers,
LEDs, those are all direct current. Okay. But
but what happens is
direct current
tends to lose energy. It tends to lose
energy as it's transmitted for long distances.
So transmitting elect you know, we generate electricity
with our dams, but then we have to
transmit transmit electricity hundreds of miles to wherever
(35:56):
it's gonna be used. Well, direct current tends
to lose energy really fast.
But,
the alternating current, AC,
because you can have very, very high voltage
and low amperage,
it transmits distances much further.
So it's much more efficient to have AC
current
Okay. Over long distances at long distances. At
(36:18):
high voltages, which is why those towers are
way the heck up in the air Right.
Because they're running at something some of them
are as much what did I say?
Well, like a power substation might be 480
volts,
and then you'd keep doubling that over distances
to get long distances. And then your transformer
(36:39):
that you have over transfer
steps it down
to your 110
volts at your house. You know, I gotta
tell you, my dad
worked he was like an electrician for the
railroad,
and I didn't get any of his chromosomes
or whatever.
Oh, it's the mercury.
Whoop. Maybe it's
(37:00):
But I have watched tons of videos trying
to explain that. Isn't it funny how it
doesn't compute in my brain very It's well,
it's not it's not intuitively
obvious.
Oh, boy. Not to me. Well, it's not
it's not intuitively obvious. But but the thing
is that places like
you know
what did you say you were in? Smith
River,
(37:20):
Pacific Power? Pacific Power. Okay. Pacific Power, Kooskuri
Electric. Right. They all have an elaborate network
of wires
and transformers
and substations
and Yeah. You know, it's an elaborate network,
and they manage that
to provide
safe, reliable electricity
(37:43):
under all kinds of conditions,
and it's not simple.
I'll I'll vouch for that. Yeah. You know,
it's not simple. And No. It's not. And
solar
power
is an entire you know, at large scale,
is an entirely new ballgame.
(38:05):
Yeah. It really is. And and
they are
And there are people who wanna interfere with
that ballgame too that,
that are against renewable energy, I suppose, to
keep the oil company. In fact, Trump has
even said we have to keep these all
all Right. Beautiful oil workers working. Working. Working.
Right? Well, it's just gonna make sure the
(38:26):
world is really, really leaving us behind. You
know, just this year in '20 well, just
in 2024,
The United Kingdom
closed down its last coal fired power plant.
Wow.
They now have
more energy being generated by wind and solar.
Yeah. And,
and then We're we're behind in that. Yes.
(38:47):
I think. Yes.
Sadly sadly and dramatically behind. Okay.
Yeah. But the the
well, the and so one of the reasons
why we wanted to do solar was not
just so we would get off the greater
whatever, but also to really make
essentially, to make a statement that we support
(39:07):
green energy,
that we want to reduce our dependence on
fossil fuels,
and that that this is something this is
something that we can do
to,
to essentially
reduce our need,
and use of fossil fuels. Yes. And I'm
going through my little for that, for putting
all that money into That yeah. It it
(39:28):
is expensive. I mean, that's one of the
drawbacks. There's lots of advantages to solar power,
but one of the drawbacks is that it
is it is expensive to install. Yeah. And
if you want to
do storage, the batteries are very expensive. So
what we did in our house is, again,
we put the solar panels up, but we
also got a very large storage battery. It's
called it's it's a Franklin battery. There's a
couple of different,
(39:49):
companies that make batteries.
One of them is Tesla. I wouldn't didn't
wanna go with Tesla.
So this is a Franklin battery, and it's
a company that's based in San Francisco. So
I was I was concerned it was a
a Chinese
company, but it's not. Alright. And our solar
panels are also made, in The United States
as well. How huge is that? Yeah. So
that was really cool. And I did go
(40:09):
back and forth on pluses and negatives.
The I I put by the pluses huge,
clean renewable
energy Yes. Lower carbon
footprint,
much better overall environmentally, which is is huge.
And before I forget, another little shout out
upon these solar panels as I discovered and
I didn't know. My hometown
(40:31):
of Sacramento
apparently was big launching the pioneer program to,
commercialize
the grid for rooftop solar. Yes. Wow. I
remember that. I'm there was a while ago.
A little not podog Sacramento. Capital of California.
Somebody told me a while back, and I
don't know if this is true or not,
that if you are building a house in
California now, it has to have some type
(40:53):
of
alternate energy.
I know. Photo potato or maybe hot water.
California, but I don't know that. I don't
know either.
But but, yeah, the person who told me
that wasn't very reliable. So Oh, well. It's
probably not. He's, he also told me that,
because Trump was complaining about the noise from
windmills, and I've been around some windmills. They
(41:14):
put windmills up about 10 miles from my
house in Alaska, and I used to go
up there to try to get an interesting
photograph.
And all I would hear,
you know, there was no jet roar and
no no noise at all. Yeah. They're they're
pretty quiet. Yeah. Yeah. And overall, solar is
got a pretty long lifespan
Yes. Yes. What I understand. Yeah. That's true.
(41:35):
The the panels won't last absolutely forever. They
too but that they usually, will last fifteen
to twenty five years depending on on the
panel Okay. Etcetera. And they're they're pretty hardy.
They
like, they said that, our panels are rated
for a 150 mile an hour winds,
which we don't I've never seen that at
our place.
Maybe 70. Not yet. Yeah. Really. Either. Right.
(41:56):
You know? Even though about storage, when when
I was doing this,
I may have been unavailable. All I knew
about was golf cart batteries, which are
awful to try to keep up with, but
that that was it. But I could run
Well, these are these are lithium batteries, and
and, you know, part of the problem with
the other disadvantages
is that it it requires mining of lithium
(42:17):
and other rare metals. And so and there
is the the cost essentially, the environmental cost
of the mining and the production
of the batteries. And so it's not like
it's like it's zero energy
used. But but, again, same thing with electrical
cars. It it costs it it really is
more it takes more energy to to build
an electric car than it does to do
(42:39):
a gas powered car. But what happens then
is you you don't use the the fossil
fuels for transportation.
So the electric car eventually will have a
net lower
environmental cost
as you as you use it. Right. Trade
offs. I think we're talking about trade offs
there. Yes. Yes. I mean, if every let's
say it's gonna happen, but if everybody went
(42:59):
solar, there would be a huge Yes. Plus
for the environment. Yes. Now so back to
the you said the the panels last fifteen
to twenty years? Twenty to twenty five years.
Yes. So would you have to would people
have to go in and then think do
you replace all those panels, or do they
recharge those panels?
Or what would be the It's actually gonna
it would be a matter of replacement.
(43:21):
Okay.
But I would hold out the hope
that, the replacement
panels would last
easily as at least as long and perhaps
be even more efficient. And then by then,
they might have more improvements even, you know
Right. Even there. Hopefully, that that would happen.
And it's quite possible that they may be
because there it's a it's silicone or some
(43:42):
other material between glass plates.
I'm assuming they wouldn't have to replace the
glass plates, that they would just have to
replace the material
in inside. Okay. Because eventually,
it it would probably, you know, stop being
as conductive for producing electrons. Okay. Yeah. Okay.
Do you do you know of any,
movements of foot to replace the lithium batteries
(44:02):
or to do something other than lithium? There
there are,
I can't remember the name of the they're
always looking for a better Mhmm.
Photovoltaic
Right. Material. Material.
And I don't know what's
it seems to me that gallium,
which is an element,
(44:24):
is is being experimented with, but I don't
know if it's any less bad than lithium
in terms of the environmental cost of mining
it and producing it. Can lithium be recharged
or reused? It can be recycled, and that's
Okay. That is I know when they take
a battery out of an electric car,
those go into,
PV
(44:45):
stations. And then it's not enough to run
a car, but it's Right. Yes. Yeah. Provide
energy. They can be used. And again reused
in different ways. Yeah.
That's something the technology is emerging and changing
almost day by day. Yeah. And
we're worried about, for example,
China's control of some key materials.
(45:06):
Anything that has been sent here and sold
and used here can be recycled here
if we just decide to do that. Part
of it is a matter of
renewable energy stuff or something. Yeah. Let me
just read you a little squib out of
a
out of a magazine called The Economist.
(45:27):
It's published in from London, and it's pretty
much
acknowledged as as fair Mhmm. And balanced.
A recent article said the scale of renewables
in China is too vast for the human
mind to grasp.
By the end of last year,
the country had installed 887
(45:48):
gigawatts
of solar power capacity,
which is almost double
Europe and America's capacity
combined.
Boy.
Wow.
They are selling solar panels
cheaply
all over the world
as the foot in the door
because if you buy their panels, you will
(46:09):
also buy
the other equipment that goes with it. And
their electric car maybe. And use it to
charge your Chinese electric car, but they will
also then be in a position to set
the standards
Yeah. For
this version of renewable energy.
I'm not here to push China. I I
(46:29):
Well But I am going to say that
we are Push reality is what's going on.
Pushing reality,
pushing the fact that
we are falling behind
and our solar panels on our roof are
sort of a statement to say, let's do
this Yeah. Here
with people that are here. Right. Do do
(46:50):
you guys see other people up
I haven't been up to Gardner Ridge, but,
are there other people up there doing solar
panels? Yes. There are several I don't know
how many how many of them are, but
I know at least at least one and
maybe several who are off the grid who
have solar panels. It's a fairly large array
as you get up at the top on
the left side. Right. Totally off grid? Totally
(47:11):
off grid. Yeah. I know this. They said
that sometimes they have to run a generator
if they don't if it's been cloudy for
a long time or whatever to to to
to do their whole house. But Okay. But
yeah. So I know people up there who
are off the grid who have solar panels.
I could have run mine year round except
in Alaska courses where I live, there's, like,
four hours of daylight, and I've been put
much out. So, there
(47:33):
and I have
I guess the word is sympathy
for the electric power companies because they
enter into long term contracts with suppliers
of things like coal, natural gas Yeah. Oil
to run their generating system.
And as
solar takes over,
(47:54):
those long term contracts become a burden, not
a blessing.
Yeah. They it requires them to rethink their
whole operating model. And if you've signed a
long term contract,
by golly, it's a contract.
Yeah.
Then you're gonna still have to pay the
electric company just to keep that their infrastructure
going. And they deserve to be paid for
(48:14):
that infrastructure. It's it's expensive to maintain. Right.
It costs a lot of money to build
it in the first place, and
they play an important part
in our economy.
But
let's face the future, not the past. Yeah.
You know, we're unfortunately, I can't believe we're
almost running out of time. We got ten
minutes, but I wanted to give out the
(48:35):
text line again.
If you have questions or comments, (541)
661-4098.
And back to this, again,
not a
expert on this, but the coal plants, they're
horrible polluters,
horrible
as far as I know. And coal is
a finite resource. Yes.
(48:55):
Gonna run out, but not solar, hopefully.
Ten billion years.
I don't think we'll care. But No. No.
Yeah. But yeah. And
even and even natural gas is nonrenewable.
People people don't seem to understand. Yeah. Natural
gas essentially is is
that's what's being produced when we do fracking.
Yeah. Fracking is is produced by natural gas.
(49:17):
It's just pockets of gas that have been
produced over pressure and millions of years from,
you know, plants and animals as they get
compressed in the soil. That's how we produce
oil and natural gas. So those are nonrenewable
resources, both natural gas and and oil. Whereas,
solar and wind are renewable
resources. So if I don't think people fully
(49:38):
understand that that we will run out of
natural gas.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that The United States
is the greatest producer of natural gas in
the world. Okay. And we have,
the largest deposits of natural gas, under our
the Continental
United States. Wow. Is there an estimate how
long that Eighty four years. Eighty four years.
Wow. Four years. That's what I'm trying to
(49:59):
say. One of the one of the problems
when they talk about global warming and climate
change. Everything is
is a hundred years from now or seventy
five years from now. And we all should
be looking at your birthday and say, sorry.
Really? Well, you know, I don't think we
have eighty four years to wait is the
problem Yeah. On the four I mean, you
know, depending on who you talk to, we've
reached the tipping point or we're close to
(50:19):
the tipping point. But Right. But the last
the the the convention that was just held
of to talk about
global warming, they reached no new conclusions.
They're the the the groups of the the
nations that met did not decide to Kicking
the ball or whatever they call it down
the road. Right. Kicking the can down the
road. And The United States didn't even attend.
Oh my lord. The United States did not
even attend. Yeah. That's So that's
(50:41):
No. He's warning he's warning other countries that
they're destroying
their economy and destroying their country by Yeah.
Paying attention to renewable. I wanna jump back
real quick to the lithium batteries. Yes.
Does China
produce a lot of those? Is that what's
going on? Yeah. There's a lot of lithium
in that China mines. Yes. Okay. And then
(51:03):
now I might be off here, but I
thought I read a report that's around the
Salton Sea somewhere down there in Southern California.
Mhmm. Pretty barren out that way. Mhmm. But
I think that they're trying to get lithium
There is lithium. There are lithium deposits. There
are lithium deposits in The United States as
well. Yes. Okay. Yes. But I think China
has developed their lithium you know, mining their
(51:24):
lithium into more to a greater degree than
United States has. I don't know who has
more. I don't know if we have a
lot of lithium, we just haven't mined it,
or we don't have a lot of lithium.
I don't know. Okay. Well, the and the
real
kicker in that is,
again,
once
lithium batteries are not just a chunk of
lithium
(51:44):
with two wires sticking out.
They are They aren't me, but that's that's
a They are a complex, highly technological
Right. Development.
Right. And
one would
hope, and the depart
there are contracts being considered by the Department
of Energy
to companies who will
(52:04):
reprocess
lithium
into usable,
to be reused.
It doesn't disappear.
It's just that that complex battery structure degrades
over time. Yeah.
Oh, there's a text. I think we have
a text if I can
pull this. I I saw just a a
quick thing. I didn't get to read the
(52:25):
whole thing about, solo panels
that develop energy in the dark.
No.
No. Haven't
read one. Okay. It it was a YouTube
thing, and maybe that's why I didn't watch
it. Yeah.
There's a lot of stuff on YouTube. Okay.
Before Some of it's true. Before we run
out of time, I'll get to this text.
Okay. To return to the topic
(52:47):
of local recycling,
recycling can save you money. By recycling, I
was able to discontinue
trash service.
Every six to eight weeks, I take my
recyclables
and one black garbage bag to CPR
on
Carpenterville Road.
I'm only charged $14
for the black garbage bag.
Recyclables
are taken for free.
(53:08):
That's right. So thank you to Texter for
Yeah. That's that's very good. Yeah. Yeah. Do
do we know anything about what actually happens
to recyclables? You know, you you see,
reports on the news now and then that
they're
in some tropical island someplace dumped in a
It's spotty. Yeah. There are some things that
are recyclable and easy to recycle. I have
(53:28):
read articles that describe
cardboard
as brown gold. Uh-huh. There are people stealing
cardboard
to be recycled.
They come to my house about once every
two weeks and steal my cardboard. Yeah. There
are other items that are very difficult to
recycle. Aluminum is very easy to recycle. Yes.
Aluminum is is very easy. But these plastic
(53:48):
They're probably the worst, aren't they? The plastic
Ones and twos. These Ones and twos are
because they they're some of the products that
we use
are actually generated from that type of plastic.
Like, they're, you know
You can see it on some packaging that
says, you know,
contains
Recycled plastic. Yes. 30% recycled plastic. So, you
(54:11):
know, you're ahead of the game by 30%.
You've still used 70%
derived from
oil, natural gas, and that. But,
like, at the beginning, we said every little
bit helps.
A while back, I saw a news item
where
supermarkets
or stores
were
(54:32):
you could buy shampoo
in a bottle that you brought in yourself.
Yes. My my brother does that in Portland.
We definitely don't want glass shampoo
things, but if I could bring the same
one back, how many broken bottles of the
shower I think that would work even here.
I mean, look at how many people
bring their own bags to Fred Myers. It's
kind of rare to see somebody take them
(54:52):
one of theirs. So
I always forget. It's in the behind my
seat in the car. I go back out
and get it. I really do. I can
I can have the I have the basket
half full?
Yeah.
Yeah. But, yeah,
I would be happy to use all my
plastic things over and over again. In fact,
one of the most Just one minute. Go
ahead. I just wanted to talk about, think
(55:13):
people may have heard of balcony solar panels.
Have you heard about balcony
or plug and play solar panels? Okay. These
are small small solar panels that you can
just they're you don't have to attach them
to anything. You can you can if you
have a balcony, you can kinda hang them
off your balcony, let the sun hit them,
or you can if you if you live
on one level, you can stick them outside
(55:34):
and, or whatever.
They don't have to be permanently attached.
And and you just plug them into your
outlet, and it will run electricity
into your into your house.
Wow. And these, I didn't know about that.
They are they they essentially are really, really,
used in Germany. Germany has millions of these
out there now.
(55:55):
And,
and but they're they're illegal in in Oregon
due to regulation purposes because
because you just start you you That's not
the best way to put electricity in your
house. Well By plugging it in like that.
But it Well, it it well, anyway. But
it it does work. And I'd say that
they they are they are they are used
in Germany, and they they are legal in
the state of Utah.
(56:16):
Utah has has made them legal.
And but they're relatively cheap because, you know,
one of the big deals is we spent
a lot of money to get solar panels
installed on our house, but these are relatively
cheap. And so anybody can get one or
two of these, and and then they can
use them to generate some electricity.
Okay. And so but they are illegal right
now in Oregon.
When I first got my electric car, I
(56:37):
envisioned setting up a solar
array outside where I park it, but that
uses a lot of power. I would probably
take your solar array to charge.
Yeah. That that's true. So but I know
a person in in Milwaukee who has solar
panels, and he he has enough solar panels
to to charge his electric vehicles. He has
two electric vehicles. He charges with his solar
(56:58):
panels.
Well, so in the last couple of minutes,
both obviously,
both you,
Jim and Louise, would encourage people to get
solar. If it's possible, yes. And, yes, it's
a high
cost Front cost. Initial upfront cost. Yeah. But
it should be a big savings down the
road. Right. And if you don't do a
(57:19):
battery,
half the cost of our of our solar
installation was the battery. Oh, I'm gonna say,
you don't have to have You don't have
to have a battery. You can just have
solar panels. It's just that it's nice to
be able to store some of that energy
so if you have a storm
and and you can still have a lot
of energy. Yeah. But anyway, you don't have
to have a battery. Okay.
Well, wow. We've covered
(57:39):
veterinary,
a little bit of religion, which is always
great, and,
solar panels. So we jumped around a little
a lot today, but we really enjoyed having
you guys here. Really appreciate that. Yes. Thank
you very much. I knew you would be
interesting guests when I saw both of you
at the oh, that's where I want to
SoCan. It's okay.
(58:01):
SoCan is every The first Tuesday of every
month. Yes. It's a You bet. And I
missed the last one. Group of people that
are interested in the environment getting together and
talking
to,
Bill Gorham. Bill Gorham, who is
Fantastic himself. Yeah. He's
yeah. He has a PhD in this stuff
and he
does a lot of work and he's
(58:25):
crazy about environmental stuff. I know there's a
better word than that, but it didn't come
to me.
Crazy about the environment. Sounds good to me.
It's in the library, so if you're not
doing anything on the first
Tuesday
of the month, then what time does this
start? 05:15
for conversation and 05:30 for the meeting. Yeah.
Good group.
Thank you, Jim and Louise. Thank you very
(58:45):
much. That was a great Thanks for having
us. Oh, we'll have you back, I'm sure.
Nice.
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