Eli5: How do countries run out of electricity? We have solar, wind, ocean, fossil fuels type of power, but some parts of countries will not have power for some time?
In: 3
Because power plants don’t magically grow out of the ground. Somebody needs to build them, and that requires money. They need to be maintained, which costs more money. They require infrastructure which, shockingly, costs more money.
In the UK we, along with most of Europe to some extent relied upon Russian fossil fuels to power out non-renewables.
Currently 15% of the UK’s national grid is generated from fossil fuels. Luckily the UK bought alot from Norway to secure some supply however when this runs out the grid will shrink by 4gw roughly equivalent to 2.9million homes without power.
Edit: Because most renewable are weather dependant they can’t be reliable enough to run the entire grid. There always needs to be some steady and on demand source.
Sources:
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-9523/
https://grid.iamkate.com/
https://www.quora.com/How-many-homes-can-one-gigawatt-in-energy-capacity-provide-for
Infrastructure my man, gotta have a way to harness the power, and if your country doesn’t have the infrastructure, then you have to rely on power from other countries, which they can stop providing for you.
The same way countries run out of food or anything else that has to be produced: obstacles in the supply chain.
Electricity requires machinery (power plants) to produce it. That machinery requires money to build, maintain, repair, and staff.
That machinery also requires resources to convert to electrical energy.
If the resources are fossil fuels, those fossil fuels also require machinery (drills, wells, mines) to produce it. *That* machinery also requires money to build, maintain, repair, and staff. The fossil fuel is generated at one location and then needs functioning infrastructure to get it to the power plant (ships, trains, trucks, roads, pipelines). *That* infrastructure also requires money to build, maintain, repair, and staff.
If the resources are natural and renewal (solar, wind, hydro) then the power plant is typically built at the source of the resource (solar farms in sunny places, windmills in windy places, hydro in places with moving water), but are dependent on factors humans can’t control (sunny days, windy days, precipitation maintaining the moving water supply).
But let’s say you’ve gotten the necessary resources to the power plant. The electricity generated at the power plant then needs *its own* functioning infrastructure (transmission lines, transformers, substations) to get it to individual residences or businesses. *That* infrastructure also requires money to build, maintain, repair, and staff.
This is what’s known as “a supply chain” — a complex set of resources, production infrastructure, transport infrastructure, and people necessary to convert natural resources — whether grain or coal or sheep’s wool — into goods that people want to acquire — pizza or electricity or sweaters.
And it’s actually *much* more complex than the ELI5 explanation above. Let’s take *just the construction of power plants*. That construction relies on engineers and builders and concrete manufacturers and steel production and trucks and construction equipment and the tires on the trucks’ and construction equipment’s wheels and computers to run the power plant and the companies that make the computers and the programmers who program them and the chips that run the computers and the universities that train the engineers and programmers and the schools that qualify the students to go to the universities and the teachers/professors that are needed to staff the schools/universities and so on and so on. *Every individual piece* of *every product* you use has a long, complex supply chain behind it and *every piece* of *every supply chain* has *its own* long complex supply chain, and so forth and so on.
Significantly disrupt *any part* of any of those supply chains and there can be ripple effects that disrupt all the later links in all the dependent supply chains.
If the mines shut down because of a strike (or the natural gas pipelines are shut off because of ware), then the resources stop flowing. If there’s not enough coal or gas, the fossil-fuel powered plants can’t generate electricity. If a power plant goes offline, no power is generated.
Even if there are plenty of resources, if there isn’t enough money or concrete or construction equipment, then the power plant doesn’t even get built
Even if there are plenty of resources and power generation, if the transmission lines and transformers and substations are destroyed, damaged, fail or just not plentiful enough, then the electricity can’t reach where people want it.
Even if there are plenty of resources, power generation, and infrastructure if the people who are responsible for operating and producing all of those things become otherwise occupied or unavailable — like by being drafted into war efforts or being starved or being killed or just migrating out of the country — then there may not be the *human resources* necessary to keep the supply chain functioning.
So how do countries run out of electricity? There are *thousands* of different ways because of the complexity of the supply chains that the modern world relies upon.
The miracle of the modern world is that things like power generation or the food supply *don’t fail* more often!
Solar doesn’t work well in countries that don’t get much light. Wind doesn’t work when it isn’t windy. Ocean doesn’t work for landlocked countries. Fossil Fuel mining is becoming abhorrent. You also need to build the expensive infrastructure and batteries. If you live in a country that can’t afford infrastructure for green energy, you rely on Fossil Fuel. All the major world Govts are doing their best to shut that down for the popular green vote without thinking about actual ‘now’ consequences.
Fossil fuel is a finite resource, it will run out. We are currently in a phase where we are using more energy per person than ever before and demanding that it be green energy (which isn’t actually green, it just moves the pollution to the manufacturing countries and there is still no economical way to recycle green energy hardware like solar panels yet). There are also more people than ever before, the population doesn’t seem to be going down any time soon and this will continue to eat more and more resources. Science hasn’t caught up yet. There are still many gaps in our knowledge. This is a young industry. Given the span of human existence, this isn’t even half a second. It will take time, co-operation and some smart people to figure out.
To add to this, power demand itself is quite variable. Imagine the hottest day of the year with everyone running their AC units will require more power to meet demand than on a cool evening when most folks are asleep. Building power generation equipment is quite costly. Rather than building a system to exceed peak need, many utilities rely on surge capacity where they attempt a combination of borrowing power from other providers and disincentivizing use. This usually works ok. However, when peak demand exceeds what was forecasted it can put tremendous strain on the power grid leading to outages.
Additionally, one of the challenges is that even when energy generation is diversified, power transmission often relies on the same lines. As such, even if you were able to generate unlimited power, if the transmission line is down (whether through weather, vandalism, or maintenance) the end customers won’t be able to receive it. Given the rugged terrain many utilities cross, repairing a downed transmission line can be costly and complicated given the specialized personnel and equipment needed and the time to fully inspect and isolate the problematic area. I hope that helps!
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