How do wind farms sell their electricity/get the electricity to where it’s used

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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

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7 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

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.

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