Florida residents, it happens to all of us more often than we’d like. A storm, hurricane, or other catastrophe causes our lights to flicker and the power to go out. Power loss doesn’t just affect the lights—food can begin to spoil in your refrigerator and freezer, cell phone batteries die and are unable to be recharged, furnaces can’t keep your home and your family warm, and hot water to bathe, cook, and clean becomes limited. The list goes on and on. The next time a storm knocks out your power—again—you may find yourself thinking about investing in a standby generator to help you weather the storm.

There are many benefits of installing a standby generator in your Tampa or St. Petersburg home. Unlike a portable backup generator, a standby generator is doing just that—standing by, awaiting its turn to provide power to you and your family. Differences between the two power generators include:

It’s Zombie season! Halloween decor is already beginning to line the streets with witches, ghosts, monsters …. and ZOMBIES. And with the season premier of The Walking Dead looming on the horizon (a mere 3 days away), I’m all aflutter with the living dead.

Nobody wants to be caught in the dark with a drooling, moaning, rotting Zombie hoard, am I right? Take note fellow survivors, we’ve compiled a list of 9 must-have zombie-apocalypse light sources.

1. Solar and Battery-Operated Lights

Powered by the energy of the sun, you’ll never have to make a dangerous trip into the city to get more batteries with motion-sensor spotlights around your campsite to alert you to any sneaky Zombies.  Take them with you when you’re doing late night reconnaissance.  Doomsday Tip: Make sure there is an off-switch. Nothing worse than trying to douse your light with a zombie on your trail.

2. Good ol’ fashioned Flashlight

As energy costs continue to rise, we all have to make some adjustments and figure out how to afford the higher electrical bill or how to reduce our electricity use in order to afford a roof over our heads. Obviously, the latter is probably the best and who knows, you just may be able to reduce your bill lower than you ever thought possible. You could actually put a few extra dollars in your pocket every month to put towards the rising cost of food. An electrician in Pasadena has a few tips you can start using today to save money tomorrow. If you would like to learn more, call The Electric Connection and talk with a member of the helpful staff.

1-The easiest thing for you to do is to turn off and unplug anything and everything when it is not in use. You can save a couple dollars every day by reducing your phantom energy draw.

2-Switch to CFLs and save about $20 a month on lighting costs. If you have a big house and typically use a lot of lights, you can save more by switching your incandescent light bulbs to CFLs.

3-Have somebody familiar with Pasadena electrical code install a ceiling fan to reduce your heating and cooling bill. Fans circulate the air in a room to help keep it cool in the summer and warm in the cooler months.

4-Hire an electrician to install dimmer switches on lights in the living room, dining room and even a bedroom. You don’t always need a well-lit room to watch television, enjoy an intimate meal or simply chat. Using a dimmer switch to turn down the lights can save you money on your electric bill.

If you would like to schedule an appointment to have a dimmer switch, ceiling fan or other energy-saving appliance installed, give The Electric Connection a call today.

“No two snowflakes are alike.” This is a statement nearly every schoolchild has heard at least once, either while crafting unique snowflakes with a sheet of folded paper and some scissors or while learning a lesson on the science of snow. While even most scientists don’t quite understand what causes a snowflake to form such complex and beautiful columns and points and branches, one thing is for certain, the composition of snowflakes guarantees that no two will ever be identical.  However, it is possible for two snowflakes to appear to be nearly exactly alike.

A snowflake begins to form when a piece of dust catches water vapor out of the air. Water is created when two hydrogen molecules attach to an oxygen molecule. The two hydrogen molecules are angled from one another in such a way that they form a hexagonal shape when they come together during the freezing process; thus, a snowflake begins as a simple hexagonal shape or as layers of hexagons called diamond dust. The emergent properties that follow from the original hexagon are what differentiate one snowflake from another, as the humidity, the temperature in the air, and many other factors (some of which remain unclear to scientists) allow each snowflake to form in an entirely unique way with a seemingly endless variety of shapes.

However, in 1988, a scientist named Nancy Knight claimed to have located two that were the same while studying snowflakes as part of an atmospheric research project. And it appeared to be so; when put under a microscope, the emergent properties looked nearly identical. But while it is feasible that two snowflakes can appear to be exactly alike on the outside, they are never identical on an atomic level. Deuterium is an atom that appears attached to about one in every 3000 hydrogen molecules in the air. Because there are millions of atoms that make up a snowflake, the random assortment of deuterium in any two snowflakes—even in two that so very closely resemble one another—simply cannot be the same.