In regions that are “100% powered by renewable energy”, what happens to the traditional power plants?
In: Engineering
I live in Vancouver BC. We could get all our electricity from hydro electric dams, but we actually buy a lot of power from coal fired plants in Alberta.
Here’s why:
The coal power plants in Alberta burn coal to heat water to make steam, and then they use the steam to spin a generator. Just like boiling a kettle takes time, starting up a coal fired plant takes time. So they prefer to run coal power plants almost all the time. But in the middle of the night people don’t need much electricity.
A hydro dam can go from zero to full power and back to zero much faster than a coal plant. So I’m the middle of the night BC buys power from Alberta and then in the morning when everyone in Calgary turns on their lights and coffee makers we sell them a bit of our hydro power.
We also sell power into the United States during summertime heatwaves. In that case everyone in Los Angeles is turning on their air conditioning at the same time, so they need extra power. We just open the taps at the hydro dams make more and sell it.
There are even bizarre times when BC is buying power from Alberta at the same time as they are selling power into the US.
This happens because all the power companies are connected to the same electricity grid which spans all over North America and can buy and sell energy from each other.
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