North Idaho Heat (Eden Acres, LLC) offers a great many self-sufficient and off-grid items including Blaze King Wood Stoves (which do not need electricity), Morso (a really great non-electric pellet stove), and The WiseWay among others. If you’re near downtown Bonners Ferry, check it out in the Old Creamery Building beside the post office. www.northidahoblaze.com.
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Rhonda sent in this website to The Woodsman’s Shop, also located in Bonners Ferry. The primary focus is to stock quality items (mostly knives) rather than the barely functional import products.
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Is Montana the Next Big Data Hub?. – R.H.
JWR’s Comment: This article proves that some journalists are only good at parroting press releases.
The more important reasons why Montana will be a good place for data centers are not just cheap labor and connectivity with the Internet. They are: inexpensive and stable hydroelectric power and plentiful cooling water. Those are the two key ingredients for big data centers.
Washington, Idaho, and Montana are blessed with huge hydro power resources that give big commercial users (like the aluminum industry and data centers) access to rock solid power at less than 7 cents per kilowatt hour. Northwestern Montana has two very large hydroelectric dams (on the Clark Fork and Kootenai rivers), but they are small in comparison to the power output of Grand Coulee Dam. Together, they are tied into the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) grid. The logical place for data centers is in proximity to the very stable power source of Grand Coulee Dam–so Washington will continue to have an edge over even western Montana.
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Signs of our Times… Idaho ranch upgrades to bigger horses for bigger tourists