In March, Coos-Curry Electric Cooperative sponsored one of our linemen to help electrify a village in Guatemala. It was the second time the Oregon Rural Electric Cooperative Association brought electricity to a Guatemalan village through its project called Oregon Empowers. The objective was to wire the 28 village homes, each with two outlets, two switches and four light fixtures.
Imagine that your home had no electricity and just had four lights and two outlets installed. How would that change your life?
What appliance would you buy first? Maybe an electric cooktop so you don’t have to gather wood and make a fire every time you want to cook or heat water. Maybe a small refrigerator so meat and dairy products last longer. Or is the priority an electric clothes washer to end the drudgery of hand scrubbing clothes on a washboard? The list goes on.
You probably wouldn’t buy a TV. There’s no time for that. You probably wouldn’t buy a treadmill.
You already walk more than 5 miles a day to meet essential needs.
Computers and 3D printers don’t make the wish list either. What about a vacuum cleaner for your dirt floor home?
Most of us today have never known life without electricity and the transformative value it brings to our quality of life. It is hard for us to comprehend how electricity enables very simple pleasures, such as ice cream or complex lifesaving modern medicine and health care. We think of power outages as inconveniences that last for hours or a couple of days, at the very worst. Have you thought about what your life would be like without electricity for a week, a month or more? Life would quickly devolve from our highly specialized and interconnected society to rudimentary subsistence living.
I am grateful for the brilliant and dedicated people who imagined, invented, built, ran and maintained our modern electric grid over the past century. Even in the wake of rising costs for the necessities of food, shelter and utilities, the value I receive from paying my electric bill is almost beyond comprehension.
We often think of the electric company as keeping the lights on. I think of it as keeping our lives on.
Brent Bischoff
General Manager and CEO