I live near a huge windfarm, but my electric company doesn’t offer wind power.
How is that windfarm plugged into the grid? Is the electricity market just shares and not about the actual electricity produced and I’m technically using the wind power? Or does the windfarm physically “plug in” somewhere very distant to me? Since the wind is pretty continuously producing electricity will I never be picked to be in a rolling blackout? How do you even have those energy saving planned partial grid blackouts when there’s windpower?
I feel like this post really embodies how a five yr old would ask questions. Any response to any piece of my questions is welcomed! Thank you
In: Technology
You have a transformer station that turns the AC produced by the wind farms into the correct current and potential difference to run along the grid. It is used in a mix with all other power sources.
Generally, they’re not constantly plugged in, but measure the current along the lines, if there is a drop, you turn on the generators to provide the slack.
In its simplest form you need input and some form of consumer. If there is not enough consumption when the system is fed it requires temporary storage in some form.
Turbines are somewhat flexible in the amount of their production as they can be switched to turn less fast for example and thus can be used more flexible than for example solar power.
You are getting power from that wind farm, your Utility just does not offer it as a specific generation source.
However you may want to look into that a little more, your utility may not offer it, but I suspect you can use a 3rd party generation source, your utility just may not promote in their literature. On your bill you should see three or four ( or more) line items in your electric section, but the key ones are generation, transmission and distribution charges – your utility may only own/control the distribution network.
All of that being said… large scale turbines output megawatts , this is brought to a substation, that will increase the voltage to a transmission level ( via a transformer) and this is connected to the transmission network( but that network will not be exclusively wind). Your utility has connections to that transmission network.
All the power that’s generated goes into the grid. Once it’s there it’s all fungible, you can’t really say I’m getting wind power or I’m getting coal power. The whole grid all the producers and consumers are synced up together at 60hz and there is a dynamic price of electricity and a dynamic generation composition. Here is the grid operator for the Midwest they connect all the way from Lousiana to Canada, wind is like 25% right now as of typing this, and the marginal price of power is insanely cheap, something like 2 cents per kwh, by the time you click the link it might be different. https://www.misoenergy.org/markets-and-operations/real-time–market-data/operations-displays/
The analogy of electricity like water flowing in a pipe is useful in a way to explain the hardware and systems involved in making an electrical grid.
But when we talk about the market for electricity, a clearer analogy is to think of energy like water being held in a lake. Energy producers “make” water and pump it into the lake, and energy users “draw” water from the lake. The producer does not care or know if the energy they are providing to you comes from them. The market is such that the producer is paid for how much water they put in and users pay for how much water they draw out. When a buyer purchases energy from a company, then the company is obligated to put in that amount of energy into the system and gets paid correspondingly.
The planned outages etc are what happens when there are too many users and too few producers (at some point) and the lake level starts to drop. The distributor of energy (usually regulated) has to shut off some users to stop the lake from completely drying out and causing more problems. How they do that is usually based on certain agreed upon procedures – whether or not the producer you’re paying is on or off line doesn’t really matter.
A national electric grid is basically like one massive lake: Power stations pour water into the lake, and users take water out of the lake, and the level of the lake must never change
Power utilities will make a contract with you that says “you can take water from the lake and pay us x$ per liter”. Since a lake is self levelling it doesn’t actually matter if the utilities input pumps are on the other end of the lake to where you are taking water out, as long as they pump the same amount of water back into the lake that you take out, the water level doesn’t change.
And of course there’s a bunch of other power utilities and power users who all have their own input and output pumps.
So any power you are using **is** in fact a mix of all power sources on the grid at the time, the fact that your utility doesn’t offer wind power just means that none of that specific utility companies “input pumps” are wind power, but *other* utility companies **do** have “input pumps” that are wind power, you simply share in the power that they pump into the grid, just like everyone else shares the non-wind power that your utility puts in.
Paying your utility for a specific type of power doesn’t mean that you only get that type, it just means the company promises that it will use that specific “input pump” to replenish the amount of power you use up.
I’m skipping the actual EE side of this because it doesn’t actually seem to be what you’re asking.
It depends on where you are, but most places there is a market for bulk electricity. A generation company owns the turbines, but of the transmission side is owned by someone else. These large scale transmission companies bid on output from the generators, based on their projections for how much capacity they will need. That determines which part of the transmission infrastructure the power winds up on. They then either deliver the power to end users or, the last mile stuff that serves your neighborhood as opposed to your whole city is owned by a another company. In which case they must access then power from the bulk transmission company.
At the end of all this bidding and transmission it hits your meter and you pay for it.
Some places all of this is owned by one company, which simplifies it, but even those regional monopolies are often buying and selling power, just with neighboring regional power entities.
This is why variable rate plans are a thing where they haven’t been outlawed. The generators can charge more for their power when it’s in high demand and less when demand is low.
So for you, personally, it all comes down to where your service provider is buying your power. You may be getting a mix of that wind farm and other sources or all of that farm may be going to other parts of the grid.
Ad to shut downs: no, there’s no guarantee. that wind farm’s power gets stepped up and will have to go through the bulk high voltage transmission leg and then transmitted back down to the lower voltage neighborhood distribution system. Those pieces could potentially be pretty far from you even of the turbines are close by.
Load shedding prioritizes the grid itself first, so control centers that operate the grid, surge capacity plants that may need input power to start, things like that to make sure they can maintain or increase output. Next priority is general emergency services like hospitals. The rest is after.
So…if you’re on the same grid segment as a hospital or a control center you’re unlikely to ever be cut off. If not, you’re fair game.
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