What happens when our electricity at home or work goes off? We get pretty upset; we can’t get our work done, or the food in the refrigerator starts spoiling. What happens when our smart phone runs out of juice and we don’t have a charger, or batteries run out in an appliance and we don’t have a spare? — upset again. And with people and businesses increasingly doing business in the cloud, again, power is essential. Let’s face it: in modern society, we have gotten very dependent on electricity, and the dependence has only been increasing.
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So what does the future hold for electricity? It’s unlikely that our dependence will do anything but increase, given the versatility, ubiquity, convenience, and cleanliness of electricity as a power source. Will the supplies of electricity keep up with our demands, will the electric grid be able to keep up with increasing demands and changing energy sources, will interruptions increase or decrease, will new electricity sources appear, and will the price be affordable for everyone? The answers depend on human innovation and our willingness to invest in the appropriate technologies and infrastructure.
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Below is short clip where I discuss grid technologies, and why we’d like the grid to work better. Take a look, and if you have any thoughts or questions on the topic, I will be hosting an IamA on Reddit in the coming weeks with several of my colleagues from the GE Global Research Grid Technologies Lab.
Stay tuned for the date and time of the Reddit Q&A and I look forward to discussing the Future of Electricity with you!
- Jim (Stump the Scientist)
