Eli5 How do people choose different electric companies if it’s all on the same power grid?
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Speaking specifically in the context of Pennsylvania: you choose the company that generates the electricity, then it all gets fed into the same grid and delivered via Penelec. Which means that you can’t guarantee the electricity that makes it to your house came specifically from your chosen supplier, but rather that an amount of electricity equivalent to your usage was provided to the grid by your chosen supplier.
This accomplishes two things. The first is that your bill has a generation component and a delivery component. The generation component is priced according to your supplier (at whatever rate they charge), while the delivery rate is the same for everyone.
The second thing it does is give you the ability to choose generation based on a specific concern, typically renewable or nuclear energy. So, for example, my supplier promises that all my electricity is generated by renewable energy. In practice this means that if I use 100 kWh of energy in a month, they’ll produce 100 kWh using renewable energy sources and contribute that to the grid. Even if the electricity that makes it to my house didn’t specifically come from their plants, I’ve still caused renewable energy to be generated instead of fossil fuel energy. So it works out largely the same for me.
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