Bank of Idaho receives Brightest Star award

Idaho Falls-based Bank of Idaho was recently awarded the Idaho’s Brightest Star Award at a ceremony Jan. 21 at the Owyhee in Boise.

The purpose of the Brightest Star Awards program is to recognize and encourage volunteerism by citizens of all ages throughout the state. Bank of Idaho was the winner in the Corporation and Small Business category, based on the efforts put forth by its employees.

The award came in recognition of an internal initiative in which employees committed to “A Year of Service” — 8,760 employee hours (literally, one year’s worth of hours). At the end of 2015 the final tally stood at 9,011 hours of donated time.

“The Year of Service has been a fun undertaking for us, and it was really worth the effort. For the people in our hometowns, and even for our employees, it put some real meaning behind our motto, ‘Committed to Community,’” said Bank of Idaho President and CEO, Jeff Newgard. “The award for our employees’ efforts is just icing on the cake.”

Idaho Gov. Dirk Kempthorne and the Governor’s Coordinating Council for Families and Children established the Governor’s Brightest Star Awards in 2001 in partnership with the Association of Idaho Cities. Since its inception, more than 500 individuals and groups have been recognized as Brightest Stars.

Roger's Revue this year features music from animated film

Friday and Saturday at the Idaho Falls Civic Auditorium

From “When You Wish Upon a Star” to “Let It Go,” music has always been a huge element in animated film. This weekend, Roger Evans and company will be paying tribute at the Idaho Falls Civic Auditorium with a live concert featuring top local talent.

This year’s “Roger’s Revue” will feature music from animated films such as “Aladdin,” “How to Train Your Dragon,” “Frozen,” “Prince of Egypt,” and many more. Performers come from the Idaho Falls Symphony, Teton Chamber Orchestra, Idaho Falls Opera Theatre, Sounds Summer Musical, and Idaho Falls Youth Arts Centre. Proceeds will benefit the performing arts programs at six local high schools: Idaho Falls, Skyline, Bonneville, Hillcrest, Compass Academy and Rigby.

If you think the performing arts are trivial, I beg to differ. Last fall I got to play Captain Hook in the Youth Arts Centre’s production of “Peter Pan,” with Roger as musical director. There were 86 kids in the cast, and although I didn’t get to know each one of them personally I can say I’ve never seen a more energetic and dedicated bunch. For my part, I hope I inspired them with my willingness to get crazy and give all in a part that cannot be played too broadly.

As great as community productions are, though, what takes place in the schools is just as important if not more so. It’s been proven time and again that music, dance, and theater increase students’ productivity. Beyond that, let’s take a look at two people we’ve been mourning recently, David Bowie and Alan Rickman, aka the Goblin King and Professor Snape. Both English and both working class, both benefitted from publicly funded art college, where they were allowed to explore their creativity and develop their ambitions.

When you buy a ticket to the show, you will have the ability to designate which high school you want the money to go to. To purchase tickets online, visit www.rogersrevue.org. Tickets are $12 for Adults, $8 for ages 17 and under. Family passes are available for $40, but it is asked that you limit it to immediate family or people living in the same household.

Curtain on Friday and Saturday evening is at 6:30. The Saturday matinee performance starts at 1:30 p.m. In addition to the Web site, tickets may be purchased at Chesbro Music and at the door. For more information, call Erin Nazario at (206) 794-4350.

Tai-Pan Trading plans March 1 opening in Idaho Falls

One of the more eagerly embraced announcements of 2015 was the news that Tai-Pan Trading would be opening a store in Idaho Falls, on 17th Street in the Hall Park Shopping Center.

To update you, the store will be opening to the public March 1, with a grand opening date to be announced soon. Information about the store can be found on its Facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/tptidahofalls/?fref=ts.

If you are interested in applying for a job, or know someone who is, visit this link: taipantrading.com/employment.

The actual address is 1568 E. 17th Street. The store will be occupying 22,750 square feet, where $2 Fabric and KC Frame formerly were. This is one of two Tai-Pan stores moving into Idaho, the other one being in Twin Falls. The Salt Lake-based company has five stores in Utah, one in California and one in Idaho, in Boise.

On its Web site, Tai-Pan describes itself as “an importer of quality home décor products at affordable prices.” The company started in 1979 as a wholesale floral supplier, in a small space with two cash registers and very few parking stalls. As the business expanded into home decor, the owners decided to open a showroom and offer merchandise directly to the public.

DOE Grid Modernization Initiative brings 15 new projects to Idaho lab

Using computer modeling and weather station data, a $2.35 million project could increase the capacity of existing power lines. Wind blowing on a high-voltage line can cool it enough to safely increase the amount of current it can carry by 10 to 40 percent.

Idaho National Laboratory is slated to lead several projects over the next three years as part of the $220 million Grid Modernization Initiative announced last week by the U.S. Department of Energy.

INL has been designated the lead laboratory on four projects that received DOE funding, and will collaborate with other national laboratories on 11 other projects. Although funding levels are subject to change, the work is expected to amount to roughly $10 million for INL through September 2018.

“I am proud to see INL involved in so many winning proposals for important collaborative projects,” said INL Director Mark Peters. “DOE’s Grid Modernization Initiative is a critical nationwide effort.”

The Grid Modernization Initiative is a strategic portfolio of projects intended to set the United States on a cost-effective path for an integrated, secure, sustainable and reliable electric grid. As described in DOE’s Grid Modernization Multi-Year Program Plan, these projects focus on new concepts, tools, platforms, and technologies to better measure, analyze, predict, and control the grid of the future — one flexible enough to support a competitive national economy and an array of emerging services, while remaining affordable to consumers.

The initiative includes the Grid Modernization Laboratory Consortium, a strategic partnership launched in 2014 between DOE and 14 of its national laboratories. This followed a 2012 White House report that said outages caused by severe weather typically cost the U.S. economy between $18 billion and $33 billion a year from lost output and wages, spoiled inventory, delayed production and disruptions to energy distribution.

Many of the INL projects will involve its Real-Time Power and Energy Lab, said Rob Hovsapian, lead engineer for INL’s Energy Systems & Technologies Division and an author on nine winning proposals. These projects will leverage the lab’s expertise and infrastructure to analyze dynamic and transient aspects of advanced power and energy systems in real time.

Information below highlights the projects that INL will lead.

Smart Reconfiguration of Idaho Falls Power distribution network

The $1 million two-year collaboration with the city of Idaho Falls aims to make the city’s municipal power distribution more robust and dependable. Idaho Falls Power Director Jackie Flowers said the idea of working with INL came after an outage in December 2013 left city residents without electricity for hours in subzero cold. Idaho Falls and INL will work with Schweitzer Engineering Labs, Washington State University and Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems to test smart reconfiguration. INL’s Real-Time Digital Simulator (RTDS) allows engineers to model how the city can spread load evenly during times of high demand. Battery research at the lab will allow the utility to explore ways to store energy from its hydroelectric and wind turbines.

Systems Research Supporting Standards and Interoperability

The project seeks to understand how plug-in electric vehicle charging will affect the grid and how disturbances on the grid could affect PEVs. This project will leverage capabilities of multiple national laboratories to perform “hardware-in-the-loop” studies that integrate communication and control system hardware with simulation and analysis activities. The $3.6 million, three-year project includes Siemens Engineering, Bonneville Power Administration, DTE Energy, Eversource, University of Delaware, California Energy Commission and USDRIVE Grid Interaction Technical Team.

Diagnostic Security Modules for Electric Vehicles to Building Integration

The overall goal of this project is to develop a Diagnostic Security Module framework to protect against cyberattacks that might come through communications systems required for PEV charging and load management. INL will lead a consortium of national labs and private partners including University of Louisiana-Lafayette, ChargePoint, and California Energy Commission. The project will cost about $1.65 million over three years.

Weather Data to Improve Capacity of Existing Power Lines

This $2.35 million project could increase the capacity of existing power lines using modeling and weather station data. In areas where wind plants are being developed, wind blowing on a high-voltage line can cool it enough to safely increase the amount of current it can carry by 10 to 40 percent. INL’s work includes a transmission line planning and routing toolkit and Human Factors R&D to help integrate weather and simulation information into control room operations. Partners include Idaho Power Company, WindSim, Altalink, Alberta Electric System Operator, StormGEO, Stantec and Oregon State University.

INL is part of DOE's complex of national laboratories. The laboratory performs work in each of DOE's strategic goal areas: energy, national security, science and environment. INL is the nation's leading center for nuclear energy research and development. Day-to-day management and operation of the laboratory is the responsibility of Battelle Energy Alliance.

See more INL news at www.inl.gov.

Fall River and Lower Valley coop directors consider merger

The directors of Fall River Rural Electric Cooperative and Lower Valley Energy have announced they are interested in merging.

Fall River is based in Ashton and Lower Valley is based in Afton, Wyo. Both coops serve a broad rural area in which many Idaho Falls and Upper Snake River Valley people have cabins and vacation homes, said Ted Austin, Fall River’s marketing and communications manager.

The next step in the process is for the two boards to define the terms of consolidation. Once that takes place, each cooperative would take the consolidation plan to its respective members for a vote of approval.

Fall River Electric serves more than 16,000 customers in eastern Idaho, western Wyoming and southwest Montana. Lower Valley Energy serves members from Flagg Ranch in Yellowstone National Park, down to Smoot past Afton, Wyo., over to Wayan in Idaho, and east to Kendall and Cora, Wyo. Austin said the two cooperatives have considered merging for decades, but changing energy policies and regional policies planned by the Bonneville Power Administration make the idea of consolidation more appealing than ever.  Two consolidation studies that have been done concluded that a consolidated operation could save members nearly $4 million dollars annually or an estimated $38 million over 10 years.

Consolidation would mean greater financial resources for dealing with changes in the electrical industry, an opportunity to expand natural gas and propane services to more members, plus greater workforce efficiencies. But both boards have said consolidation would not result in employee layoffs or reductions in pay for the existing staffs.

Much more work is needed on the plan before it is presented to the owner-members of each cooperative for a vote later this

year, Austin said. If approved, implementation of the entire consolidation plan could take two to three years.

GOBankingRates.com gives Idaho some good press -- again

Idaho has been getting some great press on the www.gobankingrates.com Web site.

Last June, the Gem State ranked third best in a listing of Best and Worst States to Retire Rich, behind only New Hampshire and Delaware. Here’s the writeup on Idaho from that feature:

Idaho’s extremely low living expenses catapulted it to third in our study, with one of the lowest cost-of-living scores in the nation — only Mississippi and Tennessee are cheaper. Retirees also have access to higher-than-average local deposit rates to grow their savings and low local tax rates; residents pay no Social Security, estate, or inheritance taxes and fairly low sales and property taxes.

Idaho was bumped out of the top two spots due to less-stellar health care scores: The state is middle of the line (24th place) when it comes to its seniors’ health, and its Medicare payouts are only average. Still, the state’s average individual insurance premiums are low — among the 10 cheapest in the nation.

In the wake of that news, today we have another piece: 10 States Most (and Least) Likely to Live Paycheck to Paycheck.

This time, Idaho ranked fifth, earning this endorsement:

Potatoes are cheap, and Idahoans' food costs are among the lowest in the nation at $172 per the median $2,055 paycheck (just 8 percent). Housing (22 percent), healthcare (5 percent) and utilities (7 percent) per-paycheck costs are all also modest, with transportation being one of Idahoans' biggest expenses (20 percent).

When all is said and done, living in Idaho is pretty easy on your budget. If you earn the median income, you can have a little more than 37 percent left over ($769) per paycheck.

GOBankingRates.com is part of the GoMediaNetwork, which is owned and operated by ConsumerTrack, Inc. Click here for its Facebook page and here for its Twitter feed.

Ted Austin named new Rexburg chamber CEO

Ted Austin

Ted Austin has been selected as the next CEO of the Rexburg Area Chamber of Commerce. Austin, a longtime resident of the area, will officially begin leading the chamber on Tuesday, replacing Donna Benfield, who has served as CEO of the Chamber for twenty years.

The official announcement was made Jan. 12 by Dr. Geoffrey Thomas, president of the chamber, at the monthly board meeting. “After reviewing and meeting with a deep and talented pool of applicants over the last several months, the executive board made a unanimous decision to hire Ted. He is clearly qualified and enthusiastic about leading the Chamber as it benefits our growing business community.”

Austin served as president of the chamber in 2011. He most recently has been the communications manager for Fall River Rural Electric Cooperative, based in Ashton, and also served as the marketing and advertising manager for its subsidiary Fall River Propane. He has held management positions at Melaleuca, ML Technologies, and Diet Center. He also has been extensively involved in local broadcasting, having owned and operated Q102-KCHQ FM radio in Rexburg, which he sold to Rich Broadcasting in 2011.

Austin and his wife, Connie, have six children and eight grandchildren.

“My first order of business will be to attempt to digest 20 years of experience and knowledge that Donna Benfield has gained,” he said, in a news release. “She has done an exceptional job on behalf of the members of the Chamber.”