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
They do not care who gets who’s power. When you buy power from a certain provider, they have an obligation to produce enough power for you and their customers but that power could be used by anyone. What matters is that buying from them means that *they will produce it*. The system simply keeps track of whether everyone produced what they promised they would. They cannot promise more power than they can make without fines.
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