Just as electric lightbulbs, heating, and cooling changed the world not so long ago, EVs and AI are doing the same today.
My still-new role leading Ohio’s Electric Cooperatives, as you might expect, requires a good bit of trying to see into the future in order to make the best decisions about our path ahead. Part of knowing where you’re going, however, also means understanding the past.
Reflecting on our industry often brings to mind one of my favorite founding fathers, Ben Franklin. Rising from humble beginnings, Franklin became a renowned businessman, inventor, community leader, and diplomat. His early experiments with electricity made him famous, and I wonder what he would think of the incredible advances that have come thanks to his influence.
One of the questions we wrestle with as electric cooperatives is what to do about one of those advances: electric vehicles. Personally, I have little experience with EVs (I’ve never driven one). I often hear about their impressive performance and the convenience of home charging, but it’s important to acknowledge there are real concerns, including range anxiety, battery longevity, and performance in cold weather.
That’s why EVs are often seen as more suitable for urban areas, where charging is more readily available and daily drives are generally shorter. In this story, we explore the growth in the use of EVs (or lack of it) across rural Ohio, including the experiences of co-op members who own them and have found that, even in rural areas, EVs can indeed fit their lifestyles and travel needs.
Of course, EV growth is part of a wider trend of explosive growth in the demand for electricity, as manufacturing returns to our shores while artificial intelligence and large data centers continue to draw more and more power from our grid.
Ohio’s electric cooperatives and Buckeye Power, the operator of the power plants that supply their electricity, are uniquely positioned to respond to the evolving demand for electricity and will play a pivotal role in this evolution. Being member-owned organizations, we are committed to ensuring that affordable and reliable electricity is always available — whether that means increasing generation or expanding distribution systems to accommodate increasing demand.
I think Ben Franklin would be both amazed by and proud of his role in laying the groundwork for all that electricity has made possible since his famous kite experiment in 1752. Just as electric lightbulbs, heating, and cooling changed the world not so long ago, EVs and AI are doing the same today. It will be interesting, to say the least, to see what electricity will do for us in the future.
