Youth applying for the 2023 Electric Cooperative Youth Tour and Cooperative Youth Leadership Camp were asked to write an essay on "How life would be different regarding the use of electricity if they were to travel backward or forward in time".
Enjoy reading the winners’ essays!
ELECTRIC COOPERATIVE YOUTH TOUR WINNER ESSAY
Thad Donley, Kanopolis
Imagine … you are a teenager in the year 2075. In school, you have been reading about what electricity and its production used to be like. You are contemplating about how much it has
changed over the years. Today, the way we produce and use electricity is substantially different than before. To produce electricity, we now are able to burn hydrogen. One renewable power source quickly to be growing is hydroelectric power. New things that use electricity are cars and semi-trucks. We also have better technology to repair the power grid if any outages occur. From what I can tell, we have advanced immensely over the past half century.
Ever since we were able to find a way to contain the energy from burning hydrogen, there have been hydrogen power plants popping up left and right over the United States. Hydrogen power is rapidly passing many other forms of power production. Another reason why hydrogen power is quickly growing is because there is now a much more cost-effective way of producing it. We are now able to isolate the oxygen atom from the hydrogen atoms, creating the hydrogen molecule. In turn, we are also able to produce nuclear power in this way.
Renewable energy such as hydroelectric power plants are also quickly growing because they are a cost effective, clean way to create energy. They are cost effective because they are cheaper to build and maintain. Where there is adequate water and other impediments are removed, hydroelectric power plants have been the fastest growing power source in the last half century. Hydroelectricity shows no signs of slowing down and should be around for years to come.
From my reading and research, there are many new things to be powered from electricity than there were half a century ago. Today, more than 25% of the semi-trucks are powered from electricity. The electric cars and pickups on the road are around 40% compared to gas and diesel vehicles. My research has shown that many people, years ago, thought the electric vehicles would take over the gas and diesel powered vehicles. I presume that the electric versus gas and diesel powered vehicle ratio will stay about the same in the near future.
A new technology that we have now are, sensors that locate where the outage in a power line occurs. We also have better engineering on the stability of our power lines, wires, and insulators. Because of this, there are fewer outages that occur from storms and other incidents. With this technology, it invokes an even more reliable grid and makes it so the electric cooperatives have less people on call.
I am grateful for the advances in electricity, not only over the past half century, but even the fact that we now have electricity while people did not two centuries ago. If it was not for the advances in power production, electrical transportation, renewable energy, and technology, we would not even be close to where we are today. Advances in electricity are advances in our world, which provides a better future for years to come.