The Down East Seniors Club held its April 27 meeting at the Blind Center of North Carolina in Washington. President Ed Hamrick led the meeting. Chip Ide led the singing of “God Bless America,” and Charlie Mike Smith gave the invocation. Dick Paul provided humor.

Chip Ide introduced Paul Spruill, general manager and CEO of Tideland Electric Membership Corporation. Tideland provides electric power to 23,000 customers in Beaufort, Craven, Dare, Hyde, Pamlico and Washington counties. They are getting into the renewable resource field with a solar farm near the Five Points area on N.C. Highway 32. They are using two approaches to reduce peak power demand and thus greatly reduce the cost of power. The first is the use of electronic thermostats for heating and cooling control. These thermostats can be remotely controlled by the customer using a cell phone and a few times a year by Tideland. The second approach is the use of a very large battery to store power during the low-demand time of day when the power cost is low and release it during the high-demand time to reduce peak demand. Tideland has one of these batteries on Ocracoke. The batteries are very expensive, so they will not get more of them until experience shows that they can pay for themselves. Spruill also answered many questions.

Bo Bowen won the 50/50 drawing.