I know that I could choose to buy electricity from a specific provider. If I wanted clean renewable power I could choose a power company that operates hydro plants and they’d take my money every month.
But there are other users on the grid and power plants from different companies feed the grid as well so everyone actually draws power from power plants that aren’t operated by their suppliers, except their respective suppliers get paid for the energy used. This wouldn’t be a big deal if a power company could supply all of its customers. If my hydroelectric supplier has a capacity of 10000 MW and the company’s customers suddenly turned on all their devices, leading to a demand that would exceed capacity, some of the demand would be drawn from other suppliers due to the fact that they’re on the same grid. I don’t understand how other suppliers prevent this. How do they make sure Company A’s customers do not take more power from the grid than Company A can provide so Company B doesn’t inadvertently supply Company A’s customers without getting paid?
In: Economics
>How do they make sure Company A’s customers do not take more power from the grid than Company A can provide so Company B doesn’t inadvertently supply Company A’s customers without getting paid?
They sort it out at the end of the month
When you select Company A you pay slightly more for the generation of your electricity than when you were just in the general pool. At the end of the month if customers of Company A paid for 100 MWh but used 120 MWh then Company A will take those funds and then buy 20 MWh from another company that generated power for the general pool, they get to keep the extra premium that you paid over what it would cost to just buy power from Company B to start with which lets them generate a profit to expand their generation overtime.
Its impossible to route actual generation capacity on the grid, and it would get really pesky with the variability of wind and solar so they just square up every X amount of time
Latest Answers