Up Front

Summer in Ohio brings hot weather — along with longer days that give us more time to enjoy it. But as we take in the season, it’s worth reflecting for a moment about something we rarely think about yet couldn’t live without: our electric power grid.

Independence Day is a special time for Ohioans to honor the courage and hard work of our founding fathers, who overcame great struggles to create a nation where values like liberty, personal freedom, and self-governance could thrive. These same values continue to guide how Ohio’s electric cooperatives operate today.

June is that glorious month when we enjoy the longest days of the year. In fact, Ohioans get more than 15 hours of sunlight on several days surrounding the summer solstice later this month. In recent years, it’s also been a time when solar power draws significant attention as something that seems like an obvious solution to America’s ever-growing electricity needs.

But even as more electricity is added to the grid from solar resources, it’s important to understand that solar power alone cannot meet our nation’s electricity needs.

Electricity is truly remarkable. It’s everywhere — lighting up our homes, powering TVs and refrigerators, charging phones we rely on daily, and generally changing our lives in ways we almost take for granted. It feels like it’s always been here.

That’s not the case, of course. It’s worth remembering that, though electricity now runs almost every part of our routines, most homes and businesses in rural parts of the United States didn’t have electricity available to them until the mid-1930s.

I think we all can relate to the amazing feeling of those sunny, 70-degree days that start coming regularly in April, giving us hope that winter is finally over.  We also know that crushing feeling of 30 degrees and snow the next day — bringing us back to the reality that winter isn’t quite finished with us yet. 

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.

Affordable and reliable electricity strengthens cooperative communities and enhances the lives of members wherever they are — on farms, in homes or schools, at their small businesses or large retail establishments, or even in industrial and manufacturing facilities. While it’s essential to meet our obligations to current cooperative members, we must also work to support economic development activities that help attract new people and enterprises to cooperative territories, with the aim of further benefiting these communities.

I am deeply grateful for the opportunity to lead two remarkable organizations, Ohio Rural Electric Cooperatives, Inc., and Buckeye Power, Inc. (together known as Ohio’s Electric Cooperatives). Our primary goals — providing affordable, reliable power and partnering with electric cooperatives across Ohio to enhance the lives of their members and communities — have never been more important, and I don’t take that responsibility lightly.

Going back to our beginning, every leader of this organization has been distinctly different from the last. We’ve all had our own personalities, our own priorities, and our own approaches to the issues of the day. While none of us has been perfect, each has been the right person at the right time for the needs of the organization. 

Every so often, we are reminded of the raw power of — and our relative helplessness against — the forces of nature. Throughout Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina, communities are still coming to grips with the devastation wrought in late September and early October by the one-two punch of hurricanes Helene and Milton, two of the more powerful and damaging storms of the past few decades. 

The utter destruction there is difficult to fathom. Recovery will take months, and even years in some communities.