Often in life, we need to balance the practical with the possible. This is especially so as we navigate the social and political demands to rapidly reduce the amount of carbon emitted from the energy we use. I have had the opportunity to serve for the past few years on the board of directors of the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), the international research organization for the electric utility industry.
Wilhite invented the GIF while he worked at CompuServe, an early tech company that was based in central Ohio. Although the name may not mean much to anyone under 40, CompuServe played a pivotal role in the early days of the Information Age. Digital breakthroughs still in use today originated there, including online shopping, stock research, and self-serve airline tickets.
Ready or not, we are quickly moving into a new era of plug-in electric vehicles (EVs). EVs first hit the U.S. market in 2010; today there are more than 1.5 million of them on U.S. roads, and that number is expected to keep growing, with millions more plug-in vehicles put in service in the next five years. The attraction of EVs include clean, quiet, high-performance operation, coupled with lower operating costs. EVs also offer the potential for major reductions in emissions from autos and trucks over the coming decades.
For customers of an investor-owned utility like AEP or Dayton Power and Light, communication with their electric company probably extends no further than paying their bill or finding out how long an outage might last.
“Members who are engaged are the ones who will attend the annual meeting — for more than just the chance of getting a bill credit,” says Michael Wilson, director of communications at Logan County Electric Cooperative, based in Bellefontaine. “Without engaged and educated members, the cooperative business model could not exist.”
In a few years, you may be able to spend your morning commute reading a book, checking e-mail, or even napping, thanks to self-driving car technology.
While they aren’t exactly as high-functioning as KITT, the crime-fighting black Camaro from the old Knight Rider TV series, autonomous vehicles from the likes of Google, Tesla, and other companies have proven that we are on the cusp of being able to take our hands off the wheel.
There is a 140-foot-tall communications tower positioned at Mid-Ohio Energy Cooperative’s substation in Ada that’s vital to the co-op’s mission to provide reliable electric service to its more than 8,000 owner-members.
At the top are two radios that are part of Mid-Ohio Energy’s microwave communications network — one that communicates with another substation, and another that points back to the co-op office in Kenton — and unless both are working, the co-op would have difficulty communicating with critical systems at several substations.
Those who haven’t shopped for a new car in a while may be surprised to find the cost of new electric vehicles (EVs) is now comparable to that of gasoline-powered cars. With that in mind, it’s not so surprising that the EV market is growing rapidly. There’s lots more, however, that consumers should know about them in order to make an informed buying decision.
When it comes to adopting new technology, electric cooperatives are David beating Goliath.
“The smaller size of co-ops allows us to be more nimble because we have fewer consumers,” says Pat O’Loughlin, president and CEO of Ohio’s Electric Cooperatives, the wholesale power supplier and trade association for the 24 co-ops serving the state. “We can try new things and deploy them faster than some big utilities.”
Middletown was once a bustling steel and paper manufacturing hub along the banks of the Great Miami River in southwest Ohio. The majority of manufacturing jobs disappeared in the downsizing waves of the 1980s and 1990s, leaving behind an older population — including many elderly on fixed incomes and government assistance.
