National Electricity Month – Life in the Dark

Your alarm goes off, you take a shower, you read the news and have your breakfast. On your way to work, you fill up the tank of gas, while circulation is managed by traffic lights. Arrived at work, you get on your computer and communicate with people thousands of miles away. You search the web with questions and you receive millions of answers. It’s a hot day so you grab a glass of water as you are comfortably kept at a cooler level…

But what if that light switch didn’t turn on? Have you ever stopped to think:

“What would life be without electricity?”

What would life in the dark – both literally and figuratively, be like?

Electricity is a vital necessity we may not realize how many items rely on it to function. Electrically powered technologies supply us with what we’ve come to know as an essential lifestyle. When the power supply is disrupted, keeping in touch with the rest of the world might be the most immediate concern that comes to mind, but what you’d be faced with would be much more impactful when considering that our 21st century world has been completely built around a dependence on electricity. Human necessities such as heating, food, water, transport, and communication all heavily rely on a constant supply of reliable electricity.

While the overall reliability and resilience of the system remain strong, cyber-attacks and climate impacts continue to escalate at an unprecedented rate. Without electricity, both the modern ease of the most mundane tasks as well as the complexities of a multi-tiered critical infrastructure system would be next to impossible.

One thing is certain, modern societies rely on electricity. In this age of decarbonization, digitization, democratization and decentralization we must continue to invest in the backbone of electricity infrastructure that supports our current way of life. Not only to keep the lights on or to enable the simple pleasure of communicating with people thousands of miles away but to power the very way of life Canadians have come to expect.