I have had fantastic growth using Facebook groups.  I cannot hardly wait to explain how but you will have to find out by getting on Facebook and looking me up there under the name Gary W. Breisch and send me a friend request and I will gladly and promptly accept it.  Check out my groups listed under my More tab there and I am especially excited to show you my groups related to the Local Bee Products, BeekeepingExtreme, SolarSchool, and Organic Gardening groups to name a few out of more the 60 classifed interests groups I have or belong to there.

The Local Bee Products that include Honey, Propolis, and Pollen have gone viral, especially the Propolis Tincture and other Propolis related products locally and me and the beekeeper(s) are working on opening other outlets starting from our current locations along and off of Highway 51 in Sand Springs and Mannford Oklahoma on West near the highway to Stillwater and beyond.  Tulsa is nearby but the "cide" are  bad near major population centers so that there is a shortage of bees.  More later of just meet me on Facebook.

go to https://www.facebook.com/groups/SolarSchool/ for an edited updated version of post about "What is your electric power company meter really doing?"

See below about that and a discovery. Previous post describe the PSO-AEP default power meter setting that take or do not give you credit for power you send them.

I met with 4 AEP-PSO local authorities 2/6/2013 Wednesday out here at my humble homestead in Sand Springs, OK, and now I know more of why and how they manage what they call "net metering". The answers may surprise you and now I know why Oklahoma receives an "F" among only 2 states when we could qualify for an "A" if more were educated in this state to understand the importance of encouraging the use of sun and wind power among other forms of clean, green, and renewable resources for electric power generation. Also I now know how their expensive digital meters work (the I-210+c by General Electric) which they would not tell me the cost of them. Verbally they said out of 6 million some odd customers in 11 states for AEP, only 1000 customers have net metering. Oklahoma AEP-PSO has managed to discourage payment of excess power from green energy by not paying for it in their monthly billing cycle. We can change this if we protest to the Oklahoma Corporation Commission to change that such that the power companies have to pay at least wholesale rates back to those generating more than they use in the month billing period.

The first picture is one of several screen shots that the meter will provide, each different. This show the total amount of energy that I produced over and above the amount of energy that I used from the power company. The upper LCD display shows 000005 which at that time I produced 5 KWH from the time the meter was installed. Below that it shows 07 which is just the name/number of the storage register that the information is stored - a storage register. At that time you can see an arrow pointing left and some dashes which were moving from right to left meaning I was producing power that the power company was getting since I was producing more than I was using at that time.

At the end of the month, they take the total that I was delivered and subtract what I produced for that month from the ongoing numbers for both. Unless you have a whole lot of panels or wind turbine power, you will likely never provide them with more than you get from them so you will only reduce your bill accordingly. For a month prior they had the meter set up to not give me any credit for what I produced. See other posts to explain their reasons for that which center around security however amount to taking energy without payment or credit for people like me that were producing power via grid-tie. Now that I am "official" they are at least accounting for it and supposed to credit me for the power I produce but not for over what I use per verbal but plan to change that soon.

The second picture shows Oklahoma's Grade is still "F" by the DSIRE graders. The only 1 of only 3 in the USA.

I looked again and there are 3 states with an "F" grade. I downloaded the pdf of that presentation too. Go to http://freeingthegrid.org/# see presentation and see the map. Oklahoma has a grade of "F". Georgia & South Carolina are the other 2 states with a grade of "F". — at GBreisch.com.

Solar Panels and Grid Tie Kits

Panels and Grid Tie Kits - S O L A R   P A N E L S

 These are available before or after Xmas 2012....... see below for text info.....

 night time is the right time for roof installations in the hot summer months

 laying the panels out on a roof......

 Extra panels for display and ease of view under and over

 Deck or Rail mount examples.........

 S O L A R..........P A N E L S >>>>>>>>>>> read on.........

As of 12/17/2012: The SandSpringsOK Solar Coop administrator, some of the members, and a team of experts from the Solar Power industry want local people to have opportunities to learn and spread th
e good news about solar panels. I am designing and offering starter packages.

I have 10 panels coming in soon. We thought they got ate by Sandy but the inventory shows they are on the dock and ready to ship out and will soon be on their way probably after December 12th, 2012. I expect them a few days before or after Xmas day. My sale price is $1/watt.  I plan to sell a kit with the panel and micro-inverter set up for Plug and Play Grid Tie experimentation or starter kits for $2/watt ($450) for the kit if picked up at gbreisch.com home/office site.

They will be 225 watt panels so that is $225 and if you want a nifty 120v +/- grid tie inverter to use with it plug and play, I have tested some and will plan on ordering some soon after this pallet of panels arrives for myself and others. I have a test panel set up to show you how to PlugInPlay it. I am guessing that the PlugInPlay inverters will be less than the cost of the panels depending on how many are ordered at once. I plan to order at least 10 after the panels are delivered and unpacked.

The first step is the purchase of a panel, not just a Mickey Mouse panel that you can get from the local farm store, a full sized modern and working solar panel. We occasionally order a pallet of panels for ourselves or buy them as a group to get lower prices on the panels. We plan to continue to do this and this is the first time I have built an ad to let you know that we are willing to sell one or more panels from the pallet loads that we get to provide that opportunity to own your own full sized solar panel.

With that panel or panels, you can go direct current (DC) to run pumps or fans for example or obtain an inverter for AC power to slow down or reverse your power meter with a grid-tie inverter. I have some examples at my little solar garden here and their are other members available to show you their systems locally. With a full sized Panel, you can learn and build from there for fun and education. The next shipment will have 225 watt panels which are described by a data sheet that you can access at this link:

http://www.solon.com/export/sites/default/solonse.com/_downloads/products/products_us/modules/SOLON-Blue/Datasheet/DB_Blue_US_en.pdf

I have also copied and pasted some of the information into a jpg for the pic you may be able to view with this post. Of course, if you want to be a part of our next group buy and want several panels, they will usually cost less however you can do what many do is to start learning and using your own panels one step at a time to build your confidence and knowledge as you have the resources to do so. The best way to learn is DIY approach (Do-It-Yourself) with help from the local Solar Coop and SolarSchool. More about those below in my comments to follow.

First come, first serve…….and now that everyone here knows, they probably won’t last long. Call me direct if you’re interested.

I may decide to sell more, however if you want one, I plan to offer it at $225 which is $1/watt. The same panel types five or so years ago where over $5/watt or more so now is the time to invest in the hardware and become aware of the power of the sun and how to use it to power your world one of the greenest ways possible.

I am selling these to others who want to learn with starter kits and/or add to their system for grid tie (run their power meter backwards) and/or using these to add to my existing experimental setups and ongoing systems that I have already tested and proven to work as designed.

I also create group buys for pallet loads of panels. I test, experiment, and use solar grid tie systems mostly now and getting ready for off grid systems. You can catch up on most other projects at my website at www.gbreisch.com and www.solavei.com/gbreisch  and Facebook groups I have created. One group among about 20 is "SolarSchool" - some other groups start with "SandSpringsOK" you can search.

Thanks for reading this post,
Gary W. Breisch

Facebook attached:
225wSolarPanelSSOK.JPG at :\1\SolarSchool\PanelPalletDeals\20121019re\
Facebook Post to follow with comments:
SolarSchool: https://www.facebook.com/groups/SolarSchool/
SandSpringsOK Solar Coop: https://www.facebook.com/groups/SandSpringsOKSolarCoop/
Gary W. Breisch: https://www.facebook.com/gbreisch

External Battery Charger to Cell Phones + More ideas

Update to Old below:

We, the public, still need a device we can charge are smartphone batteries using a stand alone, external charger so we can buy some extra batteries from you.  Now if the smartphone builder would design their phones to be able to slip a battery in and out the side without having to take off the back of the phone and break off fingernails and all, that is what I call an advancement.  All devices need a relatively easy way to slip in and out battery packs, including Solar Systems and electric vehicles for quick change out and backup batteries for extended mileage or use.

Go to Facebook and friend Gary W. Breisch for more ideas on this and many other somewhat related subjects.  Check out his groups in Facebook and Google + regarding Solar, Electric Vehicles, Organic Gardening, Local Honey and Bee Products, SandSpringsOK groups, and SolarSchool to name a few interests. Also visit www.gbreisch.com for more information and motivation.
 
Old: I want an External Battery Charger for my 2 phones. One is a SGH-T959V and a  SCH-R930. I sometime run out of power in the phone so I would like to take the battery out to charge it in an external charger while I put one that is already charged back in the phone so I can keep working.  Now I have to take it off the computer and charge it on an ac connection to get it to work.  I tethering eats up the battery and cannot charge it fast enough to keep up with the power consumption.   You would think that the Samsung Galaxy S II phones would have a good enough charging system to keep up with computer hotspot or tethering use but it will die after 2 to 3 hours or less of use even while hooked up to the computer with USB connection. Have you heard of Solavei yet?  www.solavei.com\gbreisch  - let me know above and if you get a chance to visit my Solavei link.

Sprint vs U. S. Cellular vs Solavei

Sprint vs U. S. Cellular vs Solavei  

Need For Timely Data Reports From Wireless Providers of Data, Voice, and Text Services

I first got a sprint data plan and card hardware that I used in my router for my home computer system years ago, sometime back in or near 2007 and have used it up to the day I recently fired Sprint. I was paying about $62 a month for "so called" unlimited  usage.  A couple of years or so after getting the card I was emailed by Sprint that I was  using to much data stream.  So I wrote them and called them about it and asked them the definition of "unlimited" at the time.  The continued to send me warnings and email when I approached or was over 5GB. 

About 6 months after that, I saw ads on TV that had the president of Sprint say the same thing I had asked them about "unlimited" and the pledged to provide "unlimited".   I retired and decided to reduce my monthly bills so I would not get in debt with all the expenses so I had a family member who worked for Sprint tell me he could get my plan changed to get my bill down to about half or so.  So I went for it and soon thereafter find that the deal was tainted in that instead of "unlimited", I was limited with the so called "employee" plan to only 5GB much to my surprise when I got a bill for way more than I want to publish here.   They forgave me for a bulk of the bill and I started to seriously watch my usage from then on.  The called the new "employee" plan, the Advantage Plan or something like that.

Since I was on the Advantage Plan which gave me 5GB of data per month for a total of about $32, I had to watch my usage closely to avoid the high additional cost of overage.  I tried for a couple of years to get Sprint to email me daily/weekly or alerts when my usage was over my time points.  Their site has usage data but I could never verify or get them to report on the timing of such data use reports.  Their data report was not dated and time reported so that I could verify my actual use at a point in time, especially at the end of a monthly billing period. 

I told them that I want accurate, timely, usage data for the period of my service.  I need the total of the end of the period at the end of the period and not several days later.  I need to know the time or the usage total reading too. 

 I developed a nice spreadsheet where I entered the data uage at the time I obtained it on their billing website for my account. I kept finding too much time delay in the usage report.  I needed timely usage/time data for my spreadsheet analysis and planning of usage. However, even with non-exact reports by Sprint, I was able to manage my time to have little to no overage.  I could not get Sprint to understand what customers like me want to manage their usage to keep cost down.

The employee left Sprint due to what he described as "unreasonable" decisions of Sprint of how they treat their customers and employees.  He is now very happy working for Verizon.  Meanwhile, I get a letter that Sprint is going to raise the price of my plan to to about $45 and give me 6GB instead of 5GB.  I have been looking for alternative was to combine my activities wirelessly to one simple provider to reduce my monthly wireless charges for INTERNET and phone activity and needs. 

Solavei looked the most promising but they do not yet provide Wifi Hotspot or Tethering services to their "unlimited" voice, data, and texting services for $49/mo. yet.  4G networks have not come alive locally yet too for all the local providers from the research I have done too.  U. S. Cellular does provide the services but not at the "unlimited" price advertised by Solavei but, with Google Voice one can have 5GB of data with the ability to tether or hotspot for less than $95 without having to buy another device using my Samsung Galaxy 2 Aviator smartphone.  Here is the suspected drawback... slow when I ran a trial of the tethering or hotspot compared to Sprint about 4 months ago. 
Maybe that has or will change for the better.  That did not reduce my bill much but at least I am saving some money and will still be able to access the INTERNET on my phone, home computer system, or notebook computer mobility or at home.  

It seems fair to say that Sprint has no provisions to help seniors or retired people on a tight budget, good, reliable, and inexpensive data services.  I plan to continue to research Solavei and especially consider them when it is time to replace my current phone which is only a few months old and the one I got to replace an HTC desire that did not last over 1.8 years with USC before it totally quit and will not turn on again. 
The new phone that I would prefer, not knowing as much about the cheaper ones that will work with Solavei, would cost over $500 which is definitely not in my near future budget at this point in time.  When you do a simple financial analysis of the total cost of your wireless usage, then it is not feasible to switch to Solavei even if they had the ability to hotspot at this time with the cost of new equipment, but maybe with used equipment.
Update - recently I used it with tethering with the upgrade to 5GB data with tethering plan for $25 added to my phone plan.  They were supposed to turn it on at the same time I cut Sprint off but like most, they did it different than discussed.  Hope they do not charge for the early upgrade but at least they will give me a cut if it is detected by me on the bill (hope in one hand and ....). It is faster than Sprint recently and saves me money to boot till I can get Solavei to provide the  same for less plus get me a phone like their HTC One for much less than the $500 they ask.

Sand Springs Oklahoma Gardeners United (Cooperative)

I am looking for or wanting to create a local urban farmers cooperative to sell locally grown produce. 

I found a cooperative but it was out of Oklahoma City (http://www.oklahomafood.coop) and not Tulsa or Sand Springs, Oklahoma (OK). 

Someone might want to join it locally and car pool produce to OKC but that is too far and costly for individuals locally to travel. We need to develop a no cost or low cost local list and group to organize and help the local gardeners. 

In my retirement I have started to spend much of my time vegetable gardening on my 1 acre parcel. My affective area for most of my gardening is only about a half acre however I have spaced it out using terracing. I and developing the terracing as I go with the rich soil and better use for rain water management. 

On April 30, 2012 morning I went out and cut, washed, and bagged several pounds of Red Romaine and Bright Green Grand Rapids Leaf Lettuce and realized I need to find people wanting to buy fresh vegetables since I cannot eat enough to keep up with it and do not want to just toss it into the compost pile and waste it. I need to join or create a list of gardeners and individuals who can help market the local produce. 

People looking for fresh vegetables need a local list of those offering it fresh from their gardens. Gardeners need a way to turn their produce into money to offset cost of seeds, supplies, and resources for their hard work and to encourage more local vegetable produce. A list of local buyers is needed too. 

Local vegetable stands, food services, restaurants, or institutions wanting fresh local produce are welcome to join the communication effort to spread the word expend the list. 

Contact me at gary@gbreisch.com if you have any information about existing resources or if you want to be added to the list of interested individuals who want to be part of such a cooperative or Local Gardeners United in or near Sand Springs, OK.

Gary's List Of Unfinished Projects GLOUP

Introduction: First of all, this is a draft and not a polished or thorough list that is subject to updating and corrections. I welcome your feedback or donations of time or funding to expand and improve these subjects. Note the date of this and other subject writings. This subject and ideas relating to them began many years prior to this summary writing of 11/17/2011 (date code 20111117). I am just throwing these subjects out there in hopes of some benefits for myself and others who might share the care. -------------------------- Subject: TRS Documentation & Internet (Online) Availability. All the Land Surveys, Section by Section, especially the ones completed near 1965 in the Keystone Reservoir, need to be indexed and available online. Other than the massive Township Range Section (TRS) folder-file system that I have built over the last 20 years, there are two outfits that can backup TRS data. Hubtack & Land Surveyor's United (AKA Land Surveyors University) (LSU) are the other two resources for management of TRS data. Hubtack has specialized in picking up where the "State" systems have left off by scanning and mapping the corner records that are part of the essential evidence needed for land title, legal descriptions, and other land surveying related projects. The United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) AKA Corps of Engineers (COE) contracted out large areas of land adjacent to lakes and rivers to be surveyed related to government boundaries back in the 1960's & 1970's I am guessing (details of which are limited by my local experience). Research is needed to index those projects and the details as to TRS information. None of that information to my knowledge at that time was filed at the County Clerk's Offices as would be proper to preserve that valuable information as with other Plats of Survey (POS) to my knowledge. Prior to 1980 I estimate, the age of government funding for the maintenance of Land Surveying related documentation disappeared. The funding, necessary for the inventory and management of that very critical and valuable evidence was all but forgotten. Today you rarely hear the title of "County Land Surveyor" or "County Land Surveying Department" come up except for the old timers like myself who remember them as a valuable source of information. There are a few "County Engineers" still out there who may have the foresight and funding to maintain and modernize that essential data. People just do not understand how important that data is to our economic health and the cost of "re-creating the wheel" for projects. Funding needs to be set aside again so that land can be developed and improved for the benefit of all. It creates productive jobs and results that help the economy more than any welfare program. A modern day WPA that would put surveyors back to work doing what they do best would help us all in the recovery of our economy. Healthy, productive, projects to modernize and make this Land Survey Evidence easy to obtain saves us all much work and will help eliminate the waste that has accumulated. Countries like China understand this have looked ahead and planned such that they are efficient and are leaving us behind. Poor management of the TRS system causes waste of time and paperwork caused by legal problems and misunderstandings. Better management of the TRS resources will put us back to productive work building things instead of shuffling papers and working with expensive and poor or no data at a much higher cost and less reliable. The cost of poor data is higher costs for insurance and legal expenses instead of using that money to build things that will advance and help our economy. Why should we have to worry about having reliable data or risking our jobs for misunderstandings that are generated by a lack of focus on helping others find and use resources that we already have (somewhere). I have heard stories of data in the form of field books, plats, and maps that have been piled into closets of County Clerk's Offices or thrown away due to ignorance in Oklahoma. Such waste is a product of ignorance and education partially cause by agencies that have their focus on aimless and many rules and penalties instead of their focus on resources and helping the land surveyor solve problems and grow as a team from the solutions. I am making progress locally by obtaining the USACE Partial Boundary Plats. It takes a lot of time to build indexes, folders, and files to store them in a somewhat organized TRS system. More later maybe........................ --------------------------------- Subject: Recovery & Better Drawings of Cistern Well Water Pumps. Recently I decided to look for a Cistern Hand Operated lever water well Pump (CHOP) part and found it time consuming and difficult to find and verify what I needed to fix my pump. I took a chance, ordered what I thought was the part I needed and fixed it. There is a lack of information for the CHOP. I started to hand sketch and measure the parts along with taking pictures and drawing the part in CAD. I did not finish the project, like most of my inspiration projects. I am not sure any project of that type is ever finished due to the room for improvements and available ways to display the information on the web. I want the time and the funds to continue with these types of projects and welcome your help. More later maybe........................ ------------------------------ Subject: Solar Panels Grid Tie or Battery Bank System - Payback Pursuit Ever since the 1960's I have been fascinated with the advent of having a solar system that would provide enough utility to pay for itself in savings over conventional utilities. I have found other people with similar interests lately and it looks like there is still a chance that solar panels may be available that will have a payback of less than 5 years if they can be obtained at a low enough price and put into service quickly as a grid tie to slow down or reverse that electric meter. It probably will not happen soon for my place but my buddy tells me that he may have them soon. Meanwhile I have taken all my small solar yard lights apart because they quit working to work on combining them into a mini panel to see if I can get a mini system working to refresh my knowledge of electronics and testing of the old tiny panels. After testing about 12 cells, I was surprised how durable they are and how well they still worked. It was that battery they provide for the yard light that was the weakest link. The cells, even the ugly ones with the clear coating all yellowed and cracked that still put out as good as the clear newer ones. Learning a lot and hope to have something of value to save on energy usage someday soon. More later maybe........................ --------------------------------- Subject: Landscape Efficiency. I took my otherwise nice moderately smooth and sloped back yard (about 2/3 of an acre) and started digging contour based ditches and ponding areas last year. It was a good year to do that since we had record hot dry weather. I did not capture a lot of water that would otherwise run off due the the drought but I am now seeing improvement in water collection with the recent fall rains. It is a good use of exercise activity to hand dig ditches and ridges to capture rain and put it back into the ground water or hold it to soak the garden better. I used to have to resist the tendency to buy things to do yard work for gardening and related projects, but now I have no problem with that due to lack of funds. I use my exercise time when not out in the field doing billable work (been a long time) to dig and wheel barrow my soil around to better use the rainfall resource. I even dug a hole 9' down in the low area to see if I could find water. I recall finding water at 4-8 feet about 35 years ago in that area or further west or north of my place. I found much more clay than I recall but a good 3 feet of topsoil and layers that indicated ancient deposits of topsoil between layers of clay. I recall that there was sand about 4 feet down that is part of the Arkansas River bed. Together with my cistern system, I want to make improvements to my place to better use the rain resource rather than see that water run off to the Tulsa Boy's Home (swamp) and the Arkansas River. If more of us would do that, we would have less flooding and better use of water resources. More later maybe........................ --------------------------------- Gary Breisch Land Surveyor's United (LSU) Member Map Administrator (MMA) gary@gbreisch.com www.gbreisch.com 918-948-5263 cell 918-401-0061 Google tel 3001 S. 137th W. Ave. Sand Springs, OK 74063 Surveying and Related Services Since 1965