Stelle Telephone Co

The Stelle Telephone Company is a member-owned telephone mutual corporation, with cooperative characteristics, providing telephone, satellite-master-antenna-TV, and Internet services within and from the community of Stelle. Its features include the first off-grid, solar powered end-of-line telephone switch and Internet web servers in North America. The phone switch and the web servers are powered by a 3 KW peak array (48 Vdc) of 60 and 75 watt solar modules. The solar modules charge a bank of GNB Absolyte deep cycle lead acid batteries. Two OutBackPower charge controllers take care of battery charge control. An ONAN backup propane generator supplies power after any extended periods of cloudy weather. The generator runs only about 130 hours per year. The COMMUNITY OF STELLE, served by the Stelle Telephone Company, is a small town of 50 homes located in north central Illinois, USA. It was founded in 1973 in a rural setting about sixty miles south of the city of Chicago. Stelle was founded by The Stelle Group, a philosophical organization chartered as an Illinois not-for-profit corporation. The Stelle Group set out to create a supportive environment in which individual human development, friendly to all peoples and to the Earth, would be a foremost priority. Stelle is an open community where people from diverse backgrounds make their home. Individual initiative and creativity are welcomed and no single organization oversees all aspects of community living. Instead, different groups play various roles. One of these groups is the Stelle Telephone Company with its mutual /cooperative characteristics and administration.