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About The Observer. (La Grande, Or.) 1968-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 29, 2020)
COFFEE BREAK 8B — THE OBSERVER & BAKER CITY HERALD WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 29, 2020 In his fiancee’s eyes, man’s secret life online is cheating Grid is at capacity for solar power in parts of Oregon STICKER SHOCK DEAR ABBY: After a long relationship, “Eric” and I plan on getting married very soon. My problem is, Eric is secretive. He keeps his phone right next to him, and before he walks into the house, he sits in his car, clearing his history. I know he looks at porn, and I’m not happy about it, but it’s the other things I’m angry and confused about. He secretly has social media. I know he’s been sending pictures of him- self to women, and they send pictures to him. Isn’t that cheating? I think secret phone and video calls to women is cheating. I saw an image of a woman’s private parts on his phone, and he told me lies about it. When I have confronted him about chatting with the other women, he gets angry and withdraws. One woman even sent me their chat history, and he lied about that, too. Abby, I love my man, but I feel he’s cheat- ing. I don’t know what else to do as there’s a wedding soon. — DESPERATE FOR ANSWERS DEAR DESPERATE: I have sad news for you. Eric isn’t “your” man. From your de- scription, you are sharing him with heaven only knows how many others. You already know he has a problem with the truth. When you tried to do something about it, he became emotionally abusive. This is what your future will be if you marry him. I have only three words of advice for you, and I sincerely hope you will take them to heart: cancel the wedding. money or getting raises, because this “friend” would be threatened by it. I almost felt Gwen was happy when I was struggling, because it made her better than I was. Is it OK to let people go? Is this a real friend? — FRIEND OR FOE IN CALIFORNIA DEAR F. OR F.: Gwen appears to have neither good judgment nor empathy. If those are qualities you value in a friend, my advice is to look DEAR elsewhere. Friends celebrate ABBY their friends’ successes and reach out to offer comfort when they suffer losses. It is not only OK to let people like Gwen drift away, but it is also healthy. By Cassandra Profi ta Oregon Public Broadcasting SALEM — Scott Zollinger was well on his way to building a new barn on his property in Marion County and putting enough solar panels on top of it to offset the cost of electricity for his family’s home. The design plans were drafted. The fi rst payment was made on the solar panels. Zollinger had even applied and been approved for about $30,000 in state and federal tax credits on the $59,000 solar project. Then he got a report from his utility, Portland General Electric, on the impact his project would have on the electric grid. The report was fi lled with technical terms, but it ultimately concluded that he couldn’t connect his 24.8 kilowatts of solar power to PGE’s system until sig- nifi cant upgrades had been made to the grid. The report included a bill for the estimated cost of the upgrades: $539,038. “My fi rst reaction was: I’m not sure how this is my problem,” Zollinger said. “How is this our problem? … We can’t just pay $500,000.” Aaron Eddy with Earth- light Technologies, who was managing the solar project for Zollinger, said he under- stood some of the jargon in the technical report, but not all of it. However, Zollinger was not his fi rst customer in the Willamette Valley to run into this problem. DEAR ABBY: I love my brother, but my sister-in-law, “Daisy,” drives me crazy. Luck- ily, they live in another state. I want to see my brother, but getting together always involves his wife. When they travel to see us, they stay for about a week. All Daisy wants to do when they are here is shop. My husband and brother have no interest in going, so it’s just the two of us. My problem is, whatever I buy, she buys the same thing. Or, if she sees me wear something she likes, she looks for the same thing to buy. She thinks it’s OK because they live in a different state. Daisy does this with her other sister-in-law, too, and they live in the same city. We’re both fed up. What should we do? — COPIED IN FLORIDA DEAR COPIED: It is said that imitation is the sincerest form of fl attery. Daisy may be insecure about her own fashion choices, which is why she copies yours. Because this bothers you to the degree that it does, the direct way to deal with it would be to tell Daisy it makes you feel encroached upon. Either that or, when you take her shopping, tell her you are going along only to keep her company while she shops, and keep your wallet in your purse. DEAR ABBY: How do you know if a friend is actually a “frenemy”? I think my friend “Gwen” may be one. I successfully started a second career and was doing well, but Gwen had no interest in hearing about it. She also announced her engagement on my wedding day, which diverted attention away from me on my special day. I went through a diffi cult time because several family members passed away, and Gwen was neither supportive nor particu- larly sympathetic. Her lack of response made things even harder for me. I no longer feel like I can share my successes about saving Dear Abby is written by Abigail Van Buren, also known as Jeanne Phillips, and was founded by her mother, Pauline Phillips. Contact Dear Abby at www.DearAbby.com or P.O. Box 69440, Los Angeles, CA 90069. weather Courtesy photo Right now, Portland General Electric has more than 650 feeder lines that radiate out from substations to serve neighborhoods around the state. Only 11 of those lines have reached their capacity to receive solar power. “So, the fi rst project I was thinking maybe it’s just this one area,” Eddy said. “And then we had two other cus- tomers, one in the Silverton area and one in the North Salem area, both run into the same problem.” The problem, he surmised, was that large-scale solar farms in that area had taken up nearly all the capacity for solar power to be fed into that portion of the grid. The substations that control the distribution of power were designed to send power in one direction: from the power plant to people’s homes. They have limited ca- pacity to allow power to fl ow in the opposite direction. And in some parts of the state, large solar farms have taken up most of that capacity. “From our understanding, those contractors have sized their projects to reach that threshold but not exceed AROUND OREGON AND THE REGION Astoria Longview 43/53 Kennewick 44/52 St. Helens 44/52 38/47 Condon 36/48 43/53 THU FRI SAT SUN Early rain; cloudy Cloudy; rain at night Mostly cloudy Mild with high clouds Showers possible 30 42 36 47 36 47 36 41 23 Eugene 4 4 2 47/58 50 45 52 33 37 22 4 4 0 La Grande 34 45 39 Comfort Index™ Enterprise 2 3 31 42 37 Comfort Index™ 4 52 33 37 17 6 6 0 4 ALMANAC NATION (for the 48 contiguous states) High Monday Low Monday High: 88° Low: 3° Wettest: 1.58” 42° 28° 44° 30° 50° 31° PRECIPITATION (inches) Monday Trace Month to date 0.20 Normal month to date 0.71 Year to date 0.20 Normal year to date 0.71 0.03 1.11 1.46 1.11 1.46 0.28 6.93 2.82 6.93 2.82 AGRICULTURAL INFO. HAY INFORMATION THURSDAY 50% SSE at 7 to 14 mph 0.6 0.05 RESERVOIR STORAGE (through midnight Tuesday) Phillips Reservoir Unity Reservoir Owyhee Reservoir McKay Reservoir Wallowa Lake Thief Valley Reservoir Elkton 51/57 23% of capacity 48% of capacity 70% of capacity 24% of capacity 44% of capacity 102% of capacity STREAM FLOWS (through midnight Monday) Grande Ronde at Troy 2540 cfs Thief Valley Reservoir near North Powder 143 cfs Burnt River near Unity 11 cfs Umatilla River near Gibbon 621 cfs Minam River at Minam 259 cfs Powder River near Richland 305 cfs Zapata, Texas Waverly, Colo. Kelso, Wash. OREGON High: 55° Low: 26° Wettest: 0.54” Hermiston Crater Lake Brookings SUN & MOON THU. 7:17 a.m. 7:16 a.m. 4:54 p.m. 4:56 p.m. 9:53 a.m. 10:14 a.m. 9:52 p.m. 10:53 p.m. MOON PHASES First Feb 1 Full Feb 8 Last Feb 15 47/61 Grants Pass New Feb 23 nee R d E O M u, k o d u S , s g n Show Listi , Crosswords rts o p S , h c r a e Word S re...? o M & s e z z i Qu Burns Boise 36/48 Jordan Valley 32/41 Paisley 36/48 Frenchglen 36/47 Diamond Grand View Arock 36/46 36/48 35/49 Fields 44/56 35/48 Klamath Falls 35/49 Lakeview 33/46 McDermitt Shown is Thursday’s weather. Temperatures are Wednesday night’s lows and Thursday’s highs. 32/42 RECREATION FORECAST THURSDAY FRI. City Hi/Lo/W Hi/Lo/W Astoria 53/51/r 55/48/r Bend 55/45/c 59/43/c Boise 48/38/c 54/39/c Brookings 55/50/c 56/47/c Burns 48/32/c 57/31/pc Coos Bay 55/51/r 56/47/c Corvallis 56/52/r 60/49/c Council 36/28/c 43/36/c Elgin 44/39/c 50/45/c Eugene 58/53/r 62/49/c Hermiston 49/41/c 65/45/c Hood River 47/44/c 57/44/c Imnaha 45/37/c 50/44/c John Day 48/41/c 54/39/c Joseph 42/36/c 48/39/c Kennewick 46/41/c 64/50/c Klamath Falls 49/34/c 55/30/pc Lakeview 46/35/c 51/31/pc 34/45 Silver Lake 36/47 Medford Brookings Juntura 28/48 49/59 49/55 Ontario 35/48 36/48 Chiloquin THU. On Jan. 29, 1966, the “Blizzard of ‘66” dumped 12 to 20 inches of wind-whipped snow from central Virginia through Penn- sylvania into southern New England. The storm caused more than 50 deaths. WED. Beaver Marsh REGIONAL CITIES WEATHER HISTORY Sunrise Sunset Moonrise Moonset 35/47 35/45 Roseburg Powers Brothers 45/53 Coos Bay Huntington 34/43 38/55 Oakridge 26/36 34/44 Seneca Bend MONDAY EXTREMES TEMPERATURES Baker City La Grande Elgin Lowest relative humidity Afternoon wind Hours of sunshine Evapotranspiration Florence 48/55 Comfort Index takes into account how the weather will feel based on a combination of factors. A rating of 10 feels very comfortable while a rating of 0 feels very uncomfortable. 38/48 37/55 Council 30/42 John Day 36/58 Sisters 48/57 50 40 29/39 Baker City Redmond 47/54 49/54 Halfway Granite 29/40 40/51 45/55 Corvallis 37/51 46/56 Newport Enterprise 31/42 34/45 Monument 37/50 Idanha Salem TONIGHT 3 Elgin 35/44 La Grande 36/49 Maupin 3 38/50 Pendleton The Dalles Portland Newberg 46/54 Lewiston 38/51 Hood River 39/51 TIllamook Comfort Index™ Forecasts and graphics provided by AccuWeather, Inc. ©2020 Walla Walla 35/46 Vancouver 44/51 44/54 Baker City it so they’re not required to pay for the substantial upgrades that are necessary for exceeding that set limit,” Eddy said. And that means the next project that wants to sell power to the grid — even if it’s just a few rooftop solar panels on a barn — gets stuck with the bill for up- grading the system. PGE spokesman Steve Corson said that is indeed the situation, albeit in very few parts of the utility’s territory so far. Customers who want to install solar panels that sell power to the grid need to use a system called “net metering” to get credit for the power they’re generating. “By far, most net metering customers are not going to encounter this,” Corson said. “This is something that’s affecting a small number of projects at this point.” THU. City Lewiston Longview Meacham Medford Newport Olympia Ontario Pasco Pendleton Portland Powers Redmond Roseburg Salem Spokane The Dalles Ukiah Walla Walla FRI. Hi/Lo/W Hi/Lo/W 51/43/c 58/47/c 52/49/r 58/51/r 43/38/c 50/43/c 56/45/c 62/40/pc 54/51/r 55/49/sh 51/46/r 56/49/r 48/38/c 53/38/c 49/42/c 66/49/c 51/46/c 63/50/c 53/51/r 60/51/c 57/50/r 62/46/c 58/44/c 64/42/c 61/49/r 66/45/c 55/52/r 60/51/r 44/40/c 52/47/c 48/41/c 60/44/c 45/39/c 51/40/c 50/44/c 62/49/c Weather(W): s-sunny, pc-partly cloudy, c-cloudy, sh-showers, t-thunderstorms, r-rain, sf-snow fl urries, sn-snow, i-ice Check out our new TV Magazine ANTHONY LAKES PHILLIPS LAKE Cloudy Cloudy 31 28 40 35 MT. EMILY REC. BROWNLEE RES. Cloudy Cloudy 39 36 43 33 EAGLE CAP WILD. EMIGRANT ST. PARK Cloudy Cloudy 33 27 42 38 WALLOWA LAKE MCKAY RESERVOIR Cloudy Cloudy 42 36 53 46 THIEF VALLEY RES. RED BRIDGE ST. PARK Cloudy Cloudy 42 36 45 39 Y R E EV Y A D I FR BL E LOGO REVERS R - COLO B
