Supply Store to Give to DARE Program at Open House

The Educate & Celebrate school supply store in Prince Frederick plans to donate $500 to the local Drug Abuse Resistance Education program during the store's annual open house Sunday.

Laurie Uherek, owner of the store in the 100 block of West Dares Beach Road, plans to present the check to the Calvert County DARE program during the Back to School event to help the group continue its work teaching children how to avoid negative influences and maximize their potential. The store donated a portion of its proceeds to the program in June.

"It is in jeopardy now of losing its funding when progress is seriously being made," Uherek said of the program.

She owns a second location in the 1300 block of Smallwood Drive West in Waldorf. The store regularly collaborates with schools, day-care centers, churches, families and community organizations to provide products and services enhancing the development of preschool and school-age children in Southern Maryland.

The open house will be from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. and will offer prizes donated from shops and promotions. The prizes include free merchandise, bulletin board kits and a VIT (Very Important Teacher) party in which the winning teacher receives discounts based on how many friends he or she invites to the party. Shops in the Calvert Village Shopping Center donated the prizes and other items, including wine and pizza coupons.

Calvert Commissioners Support Broadband Plan

The Calvert Board of County Commissioners has offered its support for one of two broadband initiatives to bring fiber-optic networks to the county. Last week, the commissioners signed a letter in support of the Maryland Broadband Cooperative, which aims to provide universal access to a fiber-optic network in rural communities in eastern, southern and western regions of Maryland.

The organization is applying for federal funding through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. But the One Maryland Broadband project the commissioners were considering a few weeks ago is applying for the same money.

The difference between the two, said Wilson H. Parran (D-Huntingtown), board president, is that the One Maryland Broadband project focuses on linking government buildings, such as the detention center, courthouses and schools, but not the entire community.

SMECO Seeks Grant For Smart-Grid System

The Southern Maryland Electric Cooperative has applied for $40.5 million in federal stimulus money to create an energy-efficient smart-grid distribution system that would allow customers to monitor their energy usage and help more customers retain power during outages. The money would come through the Department of Energy's Smart Grid Investment Grant Program. SMECO's proposal includes the installation of advanced meters at homes and businesses, technologies that provide two-way communications, and hardware that responds to electronic communication.

"We can get real-time, detailed data so we can monitor our system at every level, from switching stations and substations, to individual service lines and homes," Ken Capps, SMECO's senior vice president of engineering and operations, said in a statement. "We can determine, right from a SMECO office, if a customer's power is out."

He said the technology "can help make our electric system a self-healing system, one that pinpoints an outage on the lines, and reroutes the power so that more people can keep their power on."

Customers could benefit from the technology by being able to tap into the system, using an advanced meter at their home or business. The smart meter would take hourly readings to allow customers to see how much energy they are using. This hourly data would also be used by SMECO to develop rates that reflect real energy costs. The customer could then select which rate structure best fits their use.