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cent. Those are typical symptoms of cows being affected by elec- trical current, or stray voltage, as detailed in numerous stray volt- age studies. The cooperative was notified almost right away, Suchla said. "And they've been out here many times, but never follow up on it." Oelkers said the co-op has done and will continue to do every- thing it can to help Suchla, including making an offer to do a complete on-farm assessment with the help of the Public Service Commission. He said Suchla turned down the offer. Renée Suchla said she and her husband turned it down because they requested an assessment from a group independent from Riverland. Oelkers said the cooperative has installed some new wires to serve the farm and responds according to Public Service Commission guidelines on stray voltage. Suchla claims he has spent US$40,000 installing new three- phase wiring, a "ring of life" system where his farm is surrounded by ground rods in an attempt to divert earth current, and an isola- tion transformer. The isolation transformer is designed to keep farms from being affected by current coming from off-farm sources by isolating the farm electrical system from the distribu- tion line. But Suchla said milk production continues to decline, despite efforts to improve feeding and nutrition. "I've been milking cows 23 years. In 1978, I had an 18,000- to 19,000-pound herd aver- age. Now it's down to 10,000 to 11,000." Suchla said he has replaced 200 cattle in the past year. Of the 64 he bought last summer, only half are alive. "I hauled over 50 dead cows out, sometimes three or four a day," he said. With milk prices at record lows and cows dying with no answers, Suchla says: "I just want to fix the problem, whatever it is. We just want the problem solved." Oelkers said the cooperative is sensitive to Suchla and other farmers who have stray voltage problems. But he said some of the electrical measurements found by Stetzer are not part of what the state recognises in its stray voltage protocol, which he says ties the hands of the utility by limiting the scope of what it can investigate. "It begs the question," Oelkers said of Suchla's farm problems. "Is it something different than elec- trical?" 7 Instead, Stetzer said utility officials questioned him. He said they denied that the source could be coming through their distrib- ution line from another farm. "I said I don't care what you want to tell the farmer, but don't lie to me," Stetzer said. "I'm not going to get involved in this. This was my first and only case." But Stetzer became involved when he asked the farmer's milk- man if he knew any other farmers with stray voltage. He was directed to the farm of David Quarne near Blair. "I went out there and checked and within 20 minutes I knew what his problem was," Stetzer said. "It was an off-farm utility problem." Stetzer said he pinpointed the problem to what he calls an inad- equate neutral wire on the power line between Blair and Taylor. On a power system, unused power returns to the substation on the neutral line to complete the circuit. Stetzer said the power line, built in 1936, is not big enough to handle today's electrical needs. "It's like running four inches of water through a two-inch pipe," he said. "You have an overflow." Herro refutes Stetzer's claim that the NSP line is faulty. "The Blair-Taylor line is more than adequate to meet their needs and even for substantial growth," Herro said. The line may date to 1936 but has been upgraded with new equipment as needed, he said. Stetzer said he discovered more than current overflow. Based on his oscilloscope readings, he found that the current flowing through Quarne's farm and other nearby farms was not regular alternating current (AC), which flows at 60 times a second or 60 hertz. He says he saw frequency similar to that of microwaves. All wavelengths fall on the electromagnetic spectrum, where they are measured by their frequency. Power frequency fields fall on the low end of the spectrum. On the upper end of the spectrum are ultraviolet and X-rays, which have shorter wavelengths but higher frequencies. Stetzer said that when he measured the frequency of the current flowing into the farms, he found readings near the middle of the UIT STALE 1CCUBUISTS UL Its SULaYy VUILage prulucul, which he says ties the hands of the utility by limiting the scope of what it can investigate. "It begs the question," Oelkers said of Suchla's farm problems. "Is it something different than elec- trical?" DETECTIVE WORK Stetzer said he had no intention of becoming involved with stray voltage when a customer con- tacted him in December 1997. "You can have stray dogs or stray cats, but you can't have stray voltage. It's got to come from somewhere." Stetzer, who was trained as an electrician in the air force, said he took an oscilloscope to the farm to check it out. An oscilloscope measures voltage vari- Y aS FACILITATING OF ations and displays the waveform of the current. = FAIRY TALES ss AS "T left the scope there over the weekend and went —_ i PROMIBITED, oA back Sunday morning because I didn't want to spend Minister of Forects valuable time chasing ghosts," Stetzer said. What his scope recorded was a series of voltage spikes flowing through the barn floor. By the signa- tures of the spikes, Stetzer said he could track them to off-farm sources, including times when a nearby farm was using electrical motors. "T figured that would be the end of it," Stetzer said. "T'd call the utility and they'd come out and fix it." NEXUS #15 - - AUGUST —- SEPTEMBER 2001 www.nexusmagazi ne.com