In the UK specifically, how does energy supply get divided up? Do the suppliers each have different pipes or cables?
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I’m going to assume you mean different electric companies. The short answer is no, you can’t know from which power plant your electricity comes. It comes from all of them. The electricity produced by a coal plant is identical to that produced by a nuclear plant or a solar array.
The energy or gas is all up into the same network. But it is all metered both at the produces and the customer side. So the energy supplier must put in the same amount their customers used. If that is not the case the have to pay for it to another supplier that put in more.
This is a bit of a simplification because there is energy loss in the network, the is the question of when is the energy delivered because the usage is not uniform over time.
It assumes the one you purchase energy from produces it themselves. It also assumes you purchase directly from the producer, In reality, you might purchase it from a company that does not produce anything themself but just resells energy the purchases in bulk from companies that do produce it.
End of the day, energy is perfect commodity. Any one watt of power in the same as any other. As long as the supplier puts into the grid as many watts as their customers use, the specific watts don’t need to go directly to their customers.
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