Today marks the first anniversary of the tornado that devasted portions of southern Indiana and Kentucky. As I was reading about the tornado anniversary in the newspaper today, I saw a letter to the editor from Niel Ellerbrook, CEO of Vectren, a large utility. In his letter, Mr. Ellerbrook discussed the extraordinary effort exhibited by his company's employees in restoring power to the area, given the huge damage to power lines and other infrastructure. His letter made me reflect on how important it is for us to be able to rely on electricity being available when we want it. Unlike the U.S., many less affluent nations only can count on having electricity during certain hours of the day. I recall Diane Sawyer stating on Good Morning America recently, that much of North Korea is dark at night, given the rationing of electrical power. We are fortunate that utility companies work hard to restore power no matter what the odds, so that we can try to return to normal life even in terrible circumstances. Yet, such complete reliance seems dangerous.

I believe that we should think about nature's ability to interfere with our energy supplies and the dangers of relying too much on any one source. If we diversify our energy sources to include more alternative energy, we may be able to ease the huge blow caused when conventional power sources--like electrical power delivered via power lines--goes down, even temporarily. For instance, if we could have generators that are solar powered and powered by some other form of alternative energy, perhaps we could have energy after a storm that could alleviate the pressure on conventional power sources. There should be some way that people can help themselves in situations where electricity is disrupted. Of course, there are battery-powered generators available now, but I believe that this technology can be improved upon such that they can use alternative energy sources. I am not certain whether this has been explored already, but I plan to research it a bit more.

If Americans want continual, reliable access to power, we need to take matters in our own hands to some extent. We need to look for ways to supply our own power in emergency situations rather than simply hoping that the utilities will immediately restore it to us.