Which Power Plant Does My Electricity Come From?

Following the dollars from your bill through the grid
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The grid is not only mechanically and electrically complicated; it’s financially complicated, too. We don’t really participate in all that complexity - we just pay our bill at the end of every month. But it does affect us in big ways, so I think it’s important at least to understand the basics.
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[@PracticalEngineeringChannel]

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[@aabbcc5154]

sorry, you get a F in the analogy.

[@RedaBaddi]

Hey, I loved the « water you up to », keep up the creativity, one of my favorite channels 👍🏻

[@seraphina985]

This is a really good explanation, as an industrial operation that largely generates more renewable power than we need at most of our datacentres this is a concise explanation of how we exchange our surplus with the grid. We also have exposure to the reserve grids at some of our sites where we have contracts with the transmission grid to dispatch idle capacity from our diesel backup generators upon request. This is infrastructure we need in order to meet commitments to our own customers but we are in a position to support the grid with fast response if needed.

[@AlfarrisiMuammar]

As a person who comes from a country Where the power generation, transmission and supply of electricity are under one state company. 😂 . Everything in America is complicated.

[@Nubs1981]

The key video that is missing. "How electric companies make money."

[@rhouser1280]

I’m a control room operator in a power plant, when I started(years ago) 😂, I asked one of the older guys where all our plant fed power to. He told me to think of it like a stream, we dump a cup of water in the stream & someone else pulls a cup of water out downstream. It might’ve been our water they pulled out or a combination of the other tributaries to the stream. I think I mentioned this on here before on a different video.

[@dsmreloader7552]

So when some business says they get all their power from renewables they are full of BS.. As well as my local power company who says they will have a 0 carbon footprint in the near future. But it looks good to all the greens who don't know any better.

[@jsbrads1]

Yup, but more precisely, if there are 10 equally strong power plants equally distant from your home, you are actually getting 10% from each one. If there are two equally strong power plants 10 miles apart and you live directly between the two, 2 miles away from one of them, you get exactly 80% of your power from the closer one if the step down transformer is right by your home.

[@StevenRides]

Thats a good explaination of it

[@OSDisco]

6:47 ​@@dsmreloader7552 well they paid the renewable generators for the electricity. The actual electricity they get comes from the grid but they're able to access the grid because the company paid for it and that specific generator supplied that amount of energy.

[@Cristnogol]

This is a good explaination. I am also a control room operator, and i've always thought of the power from the market side of things. We contribute to a power pool (we are a part of SPP) and I've seen how demand and price coinside with the load on individual plants to provide. This video and this comment help me visualize the reality behind what I've just treated as a market for distributing power.

[@IPv4Address]

18-year-old college student here, and I just wanna say I love all your content and the pure thought and passion you put into teaching. Your simplifications, analogies, and explanations are probably the best ever created. You alone have sparked my interest in topics that have driven me to dive deeper into how things work and ignited my passion to understand the world around me. I honestly believe you’re part of the reason that I am now on track to be an electrical/computer engineer. I know it sounds cliché, but seriously keep up the great work.

[@theamaturepro]

I discovered this guy when I was 18 and a freshman in college as well. I've been watching him ever since, well over a decade. I appreciate how pragmatic he is and how well he presents both sides when a topic is controversial. Otherwise, his ability to explain tricky subjects so anyone can understand is incredible. If you're 18 watching this kind of content, you're on a good track, man.

[@MikeBaxterABC]

Before "deregulation" my small city owned TWO hydro eclectic power plant, TWO Emergency Back Up diesel turbines (that were tested twice a year and never used as a rule) .... ... AND a Natural Gas Co-Generator that could be fed into the grid with a flick of a switch ... (it's main purpose was for Hospital use if power went out We were of course tied int the Eastern power grid like every city in our area. BUT we generated 125% of the power we used, any time we got power FROM the grid it was at a huge discount as we didn't need it. Every year before Christmas EVERY one who paid a power bull got a CHEQUE from the City as the charges typically were a little bit more than the cost to generate it, the entire Cities power system operated at ZERO profit.(I used to get $125 or so) After "Deregulation" our power prices tripled over a 10 year span :( At one point I literally had to sell my belongings to pay the bill, and the power goes out all the time now.

[@MonkeyJedi99]

Yep, deregulation was giving the wolves the key to the sheep pen. And since this came about on the tail of anti-trust laws being sent to "a farm upstate"? The wolves don't always stop when the wool is fully sheared, and the wolves can form HUGE packs.

[@TheDMChannelPerplexity]

"Hmmm, let's solve this problem by giving.. ANOTHA BILLION TO (insert overseas country here)!!" - Politicians.

[@mamotalemankoe3775]

I see you felt the holy touch of the "free" market. Maximising the net worth increase efficiency of the energy executives.

[@AnonymousAnarchist2]

The otherside of deregulation is that you can set up a mutial co-op to replace these town programs, and mutual co-ops do tend to run more robustly then non-profit's. This is because every consumer is an owner. So no matter how laws are used to slice up and change the rules of the game called the market; your in a winning position. the downside is they can take a decade or more to really start up, and if there is a labor shortage or people dont want to pay enough to hire labor, your the owner time to draw straws and see who does the work, and naturally Mutial and Co-op only work together for a limited area and for servives like electricity. I suppose they coukd work for doing something wild like restarting bell-labs type things in the after effects of the investor revolution, but direct sell of product cannot typically be both mutual and Co-op in operating model. Mutual is trying to set things up outside of money rathen then non-profit, co-op is co-operative small ownership

[@AnonymousAnarchist2]

​​@@TheDMChannelPerplexityYes. That actually fights inflation. Giving billions away fights inflation. Money does not work like we where taught in school at all. It gets it value explcitly by being spent and changing hands, countries spend thier money. Corperations by defenition are working hard to not spend money. therefore give money to countries and civil groups to raise moneies value. and then you have to look at the stocks system and all that and realize you need inflation and prices can never go down while stocks control 5/8th's of all the worlds ... everything that can be sold. (edit:couple typos)

[@ASFalcon13]

2:02 "You can't just go to the store and buy a case of kilowatt-hours" Sure I can, it's just not very efficient. You ever bought a box of AA batteries before?

[@capps2015]

That's where my mind went.

[@Derekzparty]

That's a box of gross DC current! -Tesla

[@SuperS05]

​@@Derekzparty let me introduce you to our friend, power silicon.

[@clawrunner]

Home Depot sells solar panels too, sometimes

[@jsbrads1]

Technically no Kilowatts in a AA battery. 4 watt hours.

[@mister-8658]

This has been the best argument for why we need 16 additional nuclear power plants on the eastern and western power grids 32 in total.

[@nomore6167]

"This has been the best argument for why we need 16 additional nuclear power plants on the eastern and western power grids 32 in total" - Why? That wouldn't change anything said in this video. What would it accomplish?

[@mister-8658]

@nomore6167 1) resiliency and reliability of infrastructure 2) cost reduction and elimination of natural gas power plants which is the source of the most expensive electricity. 3) future-proofing the grid system for the increased power demands of 5G and other new technologies such as electric vehicles that are going to be making a dramatically increased demand on our electric grid.

[@krallja]

@@mister-8658”power demands of 5G” bro what. it’s a cell tower, not a steel smelting facility.

[@randomvideosn0where]

​@@mister-8658 EVs don't necessarily need to strain the grid. Even driving 50 miles a day my usage was only 12kWh which could easily be charged either at work during peak solar (2 hours on a standard charger) or charged after midnight when electric usage is rock bottom. And of course it can be stopped if the grid is experiencing a shortage. That way it actually stabilizes the grid, not strains.

[@mister-8658]

@randomvideosn0where I would remind you of the massive number of brownouts in California over the last 10 years. As well as the factor of scale 12 kilowatt hours per American driver of which there is approximately 250 million a day adds up to a tremendous burden very quickly.

[@kevincronk7981]

I am currently in college majoring in economics. Power companies are one of the primary examples we tend to use when talking about natural monopolies, because everything about power generation and distribution is so capital intensive with a very high minimum amount you would need to invest to start a power company, that having any competition at all would be horrendously inefficient. But since in a normal market, monopolies are also pretty inefficient since they have too much market power, we have to establish regulated monopolies, which basically every power company is. Since there is only 1 company that will sell you power in most locations, they can charge you almost whatever they want, and you have to either pay up or just not have power. That's why we have to have restrictions on what they are allowed to charge you.

[@comphoto6451]

That makes sense, plus it probably ultimately drives down cost as everyone in an area shares the cost while if there were competition then you'd have double the lines, generators, etc so the companies would have to charge more for less

[@P7777-u7r]

In British Columbia we had the "benefit" of not having a power grid to speak of (there was electrification but all just local generation) until the 1960s and at that time it was decided to just make it a public infrastructure project also because most of the electricity comes from massive dams with large reservoirs that private companies never could have gotten permission for. In theory it's like a highway but for electricity and our bills reflect the cost of maintainence, expansion, r&d, and worker salaries with nobody expecting to collect profits and it hasnt been perfect but we have consistently ranked among the bottom 5 lowest costs of electricity in North America since the system was brought online and if nobody screws with it it should work for centuries in theory continuously harnessing the sheer power of the water cycle in the mountains saving fuel for every other purpose. It really was amazing to see when the price shocks to the "world merket price" of electricity were getting so bad it was on the news yet our hydro bills all stayed the same, theyve been up a bit in recent years but that's because the biggest dam to be added to the system in decades is being constructed. People mainly Americans worry about socialism in things like this but this really isnt its just old school patriotic infrastructure the equivalent to Ike's Interstates or the Roman Aqueducts the idea long predates the birth of Marx. Ultimately there's more opportunity to profit and prosper in this land because this electric system exists. The postwar 20th century USA "ironically" enough built more grand scale public infrastructure that truly benefited most citizens than the "commies" in the USSR which was basically an army with a state.

[@scpatl4now]

Problem with that is monopoly power companies like Georgia Power have captured the regulators that let them do and charge what they want.

[@davorzdralo8000]

And this is why utilities (and in general inflexible demand) should be socialized, not privatized.

[@MoiiE801]

Sounds commie

[@MoneySavingVideos]

I have had 46 solar panels on my roof in Oregon for the past 14 years. I pay a small fee each month ($25) to be connected to the grid. During the day my meter goes backward and at night it goes forward. I generate more than I use so each year I get a check that more then covers the monthly fee.

[@NiklasAuBln]

I work in the event industry and we need some power for our events (sometimes up to 400A at 230V) but those big and temporary connections to the grid are expensive. So for small and medium sized events we use more and more Batteries because usually we do not need the full capacity at all times but we have to spec the connection for the peak on the grid -> expensive. With Batteries we can for example use one 63A CEE three-phase connector on the supply side and feed this into the Batterie and a 125A CEE three-phase connector on the load side, in normal use we do not need the full 63A that the supply can provide and with the excess the Batterie gets charged, if we temporarily need more we can output up to 125A on the load side (combination of the 63A from the supply and the batteries) -> lower costs for the supply because we flatten the peaks ourselves. Another Great thing with Batteries is that we sometimes have the requirement to be independent from the grid (for example major Broadcast events), previously we had to rent syncable generators and keep them on all the time to power the Broadcast equipment even if one of those generators would fail (that's why they need to be in Sync). Nowadays we use power from the grid with a Battery in front of the load -> in case of a power outage the Broadcast can continue on Batterie power and once the Battery level is low the Battery controller will start the generator -> way les emissions. A Video on such "mobile*" power solutions would be great because we often hear that this is not possible until we proof that it is possible. *mobile as with a small crane/forklift, one Batterie Box can weight a few hundred kilograms

[@username34159265]

Who manufactures these giant mobile power stations for you? Sounds fascinating!

[@DasGanon]

Oh this is super fascinating for me from an event running side, as I was unaware that the venue was paying specifically for the 3 phase Sokkos for concerts and stuff. Super fascinating stuff and I'm curious and excited how that's going to work going forwards.

[@JesseBayne]

@@username34159265 doubtful it's a single manufacturer, with a skilled team of technicians you could put something like this together in a day or two assuming you have the requisite gear and already have a plan for a working system

[@hb-man]

Now add to this equation the fact you can buy self-driving batteries, a.k.a electric trucks. Tesla is the most prominent contestant with interesting but impractical design, but every major truck manufacturer has something to offer in more traditional package form, and it works really well, at least in Europe. So you can use the truck for delivery, then recharge and power or buffer the event, them pack up and drive home.

[@NiklasAuBln]

@@username34159265 afaik they are manufactured by a German company called MobilHybrid and the batterie that we usually rent is the MH-36 model. Small correction regarding weight, this one weighs a bit over two tonnes and not only a few hundred kilos.

[@gracemember101]

I'm reminded the day a gasoline distributor told me all refineries put their output into a common distribution system and distributors take it out. The difference is the additives they put into the gasoline when they put it in the tanker trucks. Blew my mind.

[@bernarrcoletta7419]

I took a logistics course in college. My instructor worked if the Interstate Commerce Commission. He told us the exact same thing.

[@DBZHGWgamer]

I'm confused as to how that blew your mind. Gasoline is very standardized.

[@YunxiaoChu]

Interesting

[@blaydCA]

Which is why generic gasoline is what I have been buying for decades. One import tank farm for all the brands. It's all the same.

[@dabomb199715]

This might be true in some areas, but this is absolutely not the case for every refinery where I am.

[@EngineeringMindset]

Great video and series Grady. Isn't it just insane to think about the complexity of the grid and that every power station on the grid is synchronized so they can produce three phases at the same frequency as every other power station on the grid. Each generator is constantly monitored and adjusted to correct any deviations, but the moment it approaches the small allowable operating limit, it will automatically be cut off from the grid and that might also mean parts (loads) of the grid are also disconnected, if needed, to keep the whole system balanced.

[@somark28]

I love your videos man

[@AlfarrisiMuammar]

As a person who comes from a country Where the power generation, transmission and supply of electricity are under one state company. 😂 . Everything in America is complicated.

[@danielsobey1036]

I can confirm that Australia with the AEMO network grid does work mostly as described in this video. I used to work for an IT company and looked after the bidding system for one of the power companies. There is 5 minute bidding with each power plant giving an offer of how much power at what price band, this is put together with the current demand, with the lowest bid to the highest bid and the price is set by the cheapest combination of bids that meet the current demand set the price for everyone. I live in South Australia and we have a lot of solar and wind and the combination of wind, utility and rooftop solar is enough to satisfy 100% of the current demand in the state with surplus being exported to the next state. With so much renewable production the price for today since 8am has been negative with the current price $-35MWh. This works as described in the video that renewables in order to keep in the market must submit the lowest bid and this can be negative or they will be switched off. These solar and wind farms still make money as they can get money from places like supermarkets or other big users of power who want to buy green power and set up purchasing agreements with power companies to buy a proportion of the output. In order to provide power to satisfy these agreements they need to be part of the grid and not be turned off so they will submit low and possibly negative bids and still make money overall. There are auctions on who will provide grid services and most of this is now being provided by big batteries that can respond in fractions of a second to ensure the frequency of the grid is kept stable. There is also a process for long term capacity planning on who is able to build power plants in the future to meet demand. The point that the grid is more like a series of channels not a lake is a good one as there are some problems with capacity of transmission lines and them not having enough capacity to move power between where it is generated and where it is used. In Victoria people have built solar farms where the land is cheap but cannot use all the capacity as there is too much voltage on the transmission lines and it is taking a long time to plan and build new transmission lines to even things out.

[@EZ-df1cm]

Hi from Gawler

[@mangos2888]

I am so thankful electricity is still regulated in my area. The degregulated markets are nuts

[@samsonsoturian6013]

Liar

[@Kiyoone]

@@samsonsoturian6013 quit fentanyl please.

[@randomguy-yv2ec]

Ooo ahhhahh ​@@samsonsoturian6013

[@randycouture32]

Grady - I really hope you can make more videos about the business of infrastructure. This is a really good way of teaching the “why” of how infrastructure works in many cases.

[@sf-jim8885]

Grady- I always enjoy your videos. Very well done and informative. During those power shut-offs in the early 2000's, I was working on the 11th floor of an office building in downtown San Francisco. Although the power company usually tried to give early warnings of an impending power outage- - sometimes they didn't. At the time, I was working on the 11th floor of an office building in downtown San Francisco. Battery backup kept some emergency lights on in the hallways, stairs and restrooms, etc. There was an emergency generator of some sort to power the elevators, but it didn't always automatically start, and it would take 10 or 20min for the building maintenance people to get it running. Those of us who were healthy enough would make the 11 floor trek up and down the stairs several times daily, rather than risk getting caught in one of the elevators. I also remember finding it somewhat amusing that when these outages started becoming frequent, they actually installed a backup power system in the employee break room to run all of the vending machines, so that if we did get 'stuck' up there on the 11th floor, we could at least still pig-out on junk food and semi-stale vending machine sandwiches and coffee.

[@Croz89]

In the UK retail energy providers usually buy energy futures that don't mature for months or even years. This allows them to offer fixed price deals for long periods of time, usually at a slight premium to tracker deals. In 2022 many went bankrupt as the sudden increase in energy prices was too high for them to manage even with the futures they had.

[@Kiyoone]

🇨🇳🇷🇺: 🤣😂

[@zacksstuff]

I live in a market that didn't deregulate, so my bill is all from the same company. Just basic charge, supply (from the company's own power plants), delivery charge, and some fees for low income discount and city utility tax. And it's very easy to trace the power right back to the coal plants in Wyoming and Utah.

[@AlfarrisiMuammar]

@@zacksstuff As a person who comes from a country Where the power generation, transmission and supply of electricity are under one state company. 😂 . Everything in America is complicated.

[@Frostbytedigital]

Im from a state that isnt deregulated and the price per kwh was significantly lower than the state i live in now from any retailer, even though the transmission and delivery fees are lower. Retail middle men in our electricity makes zero sense.

[@giacomobonetti9134]

I think its the same way in my country, Croatia. The majority comes from 1 operator, 2 types of contract: If your house,app Is built before a certain date you got the old school meter with the same price 24h, after that date you get the digital meter with 2 rows ,One for the day tariff and the other for the night tariff. Prices relatively ok

[@qwerty112311]

How do you trace the energy to anywhere when Utah and Wyoming are on the vast western interconnection, which has generation from all sources, including in the immediate vicinity of/in Utah and Wyoming? And yes, that was rhetorical, because you can’t. Just because your bill is from company XYZ doesn’t mean your electricity is from one of their plants. It means they are billing you. Maybe it was from their plant, maybe it was from a different company’s plant and your billing utility bought it from them.

[@zacksstuff]

@@qwerty112311 it's the pond analogy he used in the video. That Wyoming plant is putting in power and I'm pulling it out. Only 13% of my utility's power comes from market purchases according to their power source disclosure, rest comes from plants they own or have PPAs for.

[@radiobabylon]

so, about griddy. i was a griddy customer almost from day 1, and i loved it. BUT, i also understood HOW it worked. i had an almost fully-automated 'smart' home, i wrote software to monitor the real-time pricing and alert me to moves outside a certain threshold or automatically adjust consumption in response, deliberately scheduled high-power activities (like running the electric clothes dryer) during the low cost periods, etc... and, for ME, it was FANTASTIC. my electric bill, to run a 2150 sqft house in the texas summer, was often $15-$25... for the ENTIRE MONTH. but, heres the thing... if you want to be in a market, any market, be it stock or electric or what have you... your success is going to be directly proportional to your level of engagement with that market. you cant just go 'oh jeepers, wholesale electricity is so cheap, sign me up!' then expect to just get and pay a monthly bill like a retail customer. and if you DO do this... the first time the market experiences a black swan kind of event, youre gonna have a really really bad day. and when you do, that is YOUR FAULT, not the market's... but what WAS griddy's fault was the way they marketed themselves. they gave the (absolutely wrong) impression that griddy was the same as a retail provider, and failed to educate potential customers on the possible risks. and yes, i was a griddy customer during snowmageddon. the difference between me, and pretty much everyone else i guess, is i got an alert that said 'ZOMG NINE DOLLARS TURN EVERYTHING OFF!' and immediately went to the breaker box and threw the master breaker. then lit up the fireplace, pulled out the sleeping bags, and got cozy for the next several days.

[@mitchese1]

We've got this in Germany too (Tibber). With a smarthome, an electric car and a 25kWh battery that I can charge and discharge from home assistant we have a setup just like you describe. Then there's the marketing from Tibber that is basically "Buy cheaper market rate power from us, save on your electric bill" which catches non-technical people off guard. A few months ago there was a technical issue on EPEX (where the dayahead prices are set), that sent our power to 8x the regular price. Our house reacted and we bought nothing for these few hours where it was (I think) on the order of $2 per kWh...but many people on Tibber were upset and complaining that "a technical glitch at tibber[sic] caused the price to be too high" and wanted refunds. Of course the glitch was that some providers couldn't bid to provide power, which then immediately resulted in a lack of capacity and the price went "insane". Thankfully only for a few hours, and only 8x the regular price

[@4rumani]

Griddy hehe

[@BrokenMonocle]

tl:dr if you don't have a fireplace, don't use griddy

[@oznerol256]

@@BrokenMonocle Alternatively, heat pump and a battery. Those things are soon going to be standard anyways

[@Ralphius86]

We have this in the UK with Octopus Agile where the price changes every half hour. Thankfully there is an integration for home assistant that reads the Octopus API and switches house loads on and off in response to the current price/kWh

[@heronimousbrapson863]

Something similar happens in Alberta, Canada too, which deregulated its electricity system about 25 years ago. It has been a disaster; Alberta has the third highest electricity prices in the country. Only two of the three remote northern territories are higher.

[@svfrey7]

It's mostly been a disaster because AESO and the MSA failed at market design and enforcement. There are obvious exercises of monopoly power all over the province which would be sniffed out instantly by any competent ISO/market monitor in the US and cracked down hard upon. Restructured energy markets aren't intrinsically bad, but you can never escape the universal principle of GIGO

[@frostystoneman3273]

Alberta is a hot mess. Its beautiful but the future doesn't look bright. Orphan wells, high sulfur expensive oil, forest fires, way less snow, little water, land locked. God bless them though, I love it there and I respect their way of life

[@Croz89]

To be fair, Alberta doesn't have nearly as much of that cheap cheap hydro as BC, Ontario or Quebec has, it's mostly gas. Ontario also has a lot of nuclear energy which can use domestically mined unenriched uranium.

[@xavier3098]

Correlation does not equal causation

[@RoeRogers]

I was hoping you would go into what happened with the California and Enron crisis you kentioned at the begining. Ive seen lots of bits and pieces, but getting your technical take would be nice.

[@cmdraftbrn]

ran a ponzi scheme, shorted the market, and got outted by one of their own. and it all came crashing down. but this was back in a time where crooks and thieving ceos went to jail.

[@DavidCiani]

The engineering side of that is less exciting. Most of Enron's scams were purely financial, but some involved over-subscribing its transmission lines and strategically idling power plants to artificially reduce supply, which boosted market prices. At the time, California's power grid was already tight supply-wise for several reasons, including lack of investment and drought. Many saw Enron's artificial supply manipulations as a factor that pushed the grid over the edge.

[@blaydCA]

They played paper games with the supply to drive prices up.

[@thewhitefalcon8539]

There's no technical is there? It's fully financial

[@FatTracksMusic]

Kottaly kagree

[@kstricl]

The Alberta Electric System Operator website has a real time reading of load and generation that also shows import and export between BC, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Montana. I've learned a fair bit about how the grid operates from the website as they have good basic explainers about the types of plants, net generation and contingency reserve. I also look at it during major weather events like when it went -50 here and the emergency alert system was used to ask people to reduce consumption.

[@GlennBeebe]

This is the BEST explanation of the deregulated electric power industry that I have ever seen. I worked for an electric utility for almost 20 years until 2000. This video should be required orientation for all new employees.

[@DavidSchuVideo]

The fact that this video came out a week after I got put on a GIS project monitoring major transmission lines, and vegetation growth is awesome. Thanks for the awesome content!

[@kentslocum]

Deregulation of natural monopolies like power, water, and gas is a terrible idea. Texas is the perfect example of what happens when a crucial piece of infrastructure is privatized and becomes for-profit. People got charged thousands of dollars for using just a little electricity--without being warned that surge pricing was in effect. 😢

[@jannikheidemann3805]

If customers are not aware of the price they are buying at, then that is no free market, and thus the free market can not have it's effect. One basic requirement for a free market is perfect information, meaning market participants have an overview of supply and demand and prices on the entire market, allowing them to make rational decisions about transactions.

[@AnonNopleb]

​@@jannikheidemann3805 You put that perfectly. Your everyday Joe almost never benefits from a more "free market" because they cannot afford to put in the time to collect information or travel to buy the cheapest at all times the way an investor can do it. A simple 9-5 worker cannot profit from scale or flexibility for his daily needs. You can't simply shift you day-night-cycle or living location to what is cheapest. Let's be real, the market is never fair to small people.

[@FuncleChuck]

I like explaining “where does my power come from” as “where do the waves in the ocean come from?” Sure, it’s basically “everywhere” but mostly it’s wherever is easiest to get to you! Paths of least resistance.

[@N_g_er]

I'm gay daddy

[@msromike123]

I'm not sure that is quite accurate, you have to sum all of the energy of all the waves at any one point in time, and then subtract all of the energy that is being consumed simultaneously and keep that at zero at all times. So my understanding is you are using a fraction of every power plant on the grid, not by how far they are, but how much input they are contributing relative to every other power plant at that particular instant.

[@daxhopkins7312]

​@@msromike123 I think it's a complex mix of both those factors

[@Immadeus]

"Path of least resistance" nice one lol

[@monophoto1]

@@msromike123 Locational marginal pricing does take into account location, but as defined by parameters of the electrical network and not by physical distances.

[@Randy.E.R]

Thank you for this very informative video. I work for a public utility company in California and still found this quite interesting. To be fair, I work in the garage as a mechanic so I don't have a full grasp of generation, transmission and distribution. What I do have a grasp on is what deregulation did to our company and things have never been the same. Selling off our generation was bittersweet since a lot of people lost their jobs with it. At the same time, many of the plants needed a lot of work and the company was hemorrhaging money just to keep them running. Eh, I will be retiring in a couple of years and I don't care what happens after that.

[@mikefochtman7164]

Worked in software industry when a north east state was going through deregulation. Consumers would supply 'next 15 miute load' tables while NUGs (non-utility generators) would supply 'last 15 minutes of generation'. Reconciling those schedules was a big part of software. And don't get me started on setting the clocks ahead/back twice a year for daylight-savings time. Another aspect was 'ancillary services'. AC grids also need VAR and 'voltage support' services. But this is a great primer on operating today's grid network.

[@MonkeyJedi99]

I'm in Massachusetts, being billed by National Greed... I mean Grid... The power generation part of my bill is only about 1/2 of what I pay. There's all sorts of fees then some more fees piled on for fun. Customer Charge, Distribution Charge (this is about 25% of the bill), Transition Charge, Transmission Charge, Energy Efficiency Charge, Renewable Energy Charge, Net Meter Recovery Charge, Distributed Solar Charge (is solar somehow not a renewable energy source for National Grid?), Electric Vehicle Charge (I have no electric vehicle).

[@ACCPhil]

Yes. Keeping a power grid running properly is very complicated. You do a good job in explaining the fundamentals. One thing though, with interconnects, electricity always flows up a price gradient.

[@svfrey7]

Hey, cool, this is basically my job, lmao. I don't work for an actual utility or market participant, but am constantly eyeballs-deep in power markets to help customers I work with. Really impressed with your layman's distillation of all the complexity, Grady. Of course there's a lot more (part 2?) but felt really approachable to someone who isn't immersed in it. Very neat to see you even talk about DA/RT markets as well as LMPs and congestion! I think maybe the only commentary i'd provide is that the term "deregulated" has mostly fallen out of favor and people typically use "restructured" - mostly because the former carries a lot of negative baggage that really isn't applicable. Happy to answer any questions that folks might have regarding "power markets 201" if this video made you more curious. ok, so YT is being gigastupid and all 8 of my attempts to reply to anyone's comments so far got swallowed into a black hole, so I'll just be editing this comment instead. "what are some resources to begin learning"? - since it's such a cross-disciplinary profession, there aren't really a lot of good books I can recommend. you just need a solid background in one of the component disciplines, a passion for the energy industry, and a healthy curiosity, and that's enough to jump start things. my background is in math and econ, but I don't know jack about electrical engineering so luckily i have about 25 co-workers who do. in terms of resources to get started, I think these would be the best: the websites UtilityDive, EnergyCentral, and PowerMag; MIT's Energy Initiative, the kleinman center at UPenn, and Rice U for graduate-level publications; and there are actually some pretty worthwhile podcasts - EnergyGang from woodmac, Power Trends from the NY grid operator (NYISO), and energy360 by CSIS, i think? though the last one is less power-focused. but all of those should at the very least give you a jumping-off point for falling down rabbit holes and sponging stuff up.

[@IntrusiveThot420]

I think "deregulated" will probably stick around with laypeople, especially after that big freeze in TX that knocked out the grid a few winters ago. Seems like weasel words to try to get away from that 😂

[@pauljones9150]

Sounds like a cool job you have. How can nerds learn more about your specific field? Any specific good books?

[@svfrey7]

​@@pauljones9150it's very much a cross-disciplinary profession so I don't even know if I can recommend specific books! My educational background was in math and economics, and I just always had a passion for energy-related stuff, so it led me to just be curious and sponge up stuff from following random google searches, bookmarking, etc. I think maybe some really good starting resources would be the EnergyCentral and UtilityDive websites. PowerMag is also pretty great. The New York Independent System Operator (NYISO) hilariously has its own podcast which has coveted a lot of broadly applicable topics beyond matters within their own state. The EnergyGang podcast by WoodMac is also pretty solid. Just start searching for things and fall down rabbit holes. There's so many niches that you're bound to find lots of things that pique your curiosity!

[@svfrey7]

​​​@@pauljones9150it's a pretty cross-disciplinary profession so I don't know if I can make specific book recommendations, but honestly a healthy curiosity is the best path forward. My educational background was in math and economics, so I still know basically jack about any of the more technical electrical engineering/power systems aspects of my job. Thankfully I work with about 20 other people who do have an EE degree so they can cover for me. As far as starting resources, honestly, here's what I'd recommend to get your feet wet: the websites "EnergyCentral" and 'UtilityDive" are great info aggregators; the New York Independent System Operator (NYISO) hilariously has its own podcast which is actually very accessible to a motivated layman and covers topics outside of just NY matters; EnergyGang by WoodMac is a solid podcast too, and I think there's also one from the PublicPower organization. Bloomberg New Energy Finance also is super respected but may not quite be what you're looking for and also their best stuff might be paywalled. The Kleinman center at UPenn, MIT's Energy Initiative, and Rice University in Texas are all some of the most prolific colleges/programs that probably put out relevant public materials that you can read through. (I'll come back later this evening and update this with a few more things that I know I have bookmarked on my personal computer but can't get to right now.)

[@svfrey7]

​@@pauljones9150KZbin has eaten like 4 versions of my comment at this point so I don't know how to make this go through. no specific book recommendations because it's a very cross-disciplinary job and I've learned a ton from working here. My educational background is in math and economics so I don't know anything about the more advanced electric engineering/power systems aspects. Sites like EnergyCentral and UtilityDive are great for reading/learning; the best podcasts are probably EnergyGang from WoodMac and whatever the one from NYISO is called. really just a healthy curiosity and a passion for the energy industry / working with data are all you need to get started.

[@willherndon5760]

I work at a combined cycle plant that stays 2x1 90% of the year. Our company controls generation, transmission, system operations, and is owned by co-op members all over the state. This is a great video that shows all of the nuances that go in to the grid. There is so much backend that goes in to what happens between system operators, fuels, generation, and transmission that I never thought about before getting some exposure through work and your videos.

[@jer103]

Electricity is definitely something we just take for granted. At home, there's always a current to turn the lights on, charge our devices, power our devices, power our appliances, and gives us heat in the winter/cooling in the summer. It does about the same thing at work. In our towns, it powers many things we pass everyday from stoplights, lcd billboards, and lights at night.

[@sys_key32]

Thanks chatgpt

[@jer103]

No, I thought and wrote it. I'm a real human being.

[@sys_key32]

@@jer103 thats what chatgpt would say

[@jer103]

@@sys_key32 You got me. I'll have to use chatgpt, for the first time, and ask it for something to say that an AI wouldn't say. I've written so many papers in hs, got an A in my analytical writing class at a local community collage, that my writing style resembles chatgpt.

[@fukkitful]

Hurricane Michael taught me just how important electricity is to living a comfortable life. After a week with no power, a 600$ generator you might use a week once, every 5 years. Doesn't seem so overpriced. 😁

[@chrisotoole827]

Thanks!

[@jarlsparkley]

Grady you truly are a light in this world.

[@tbix1963]

Thanks for sharing your thoughts, ideas and videos. Always interesting and entertaining to revisit a period of time you personally lived thru. Worked thru regulated, to deregulation, and beyond. Over 32 years in the power system control room, currently retired. Power marketing was a great way to loose a lot of money back in the day. Enron certainly lived up to that, but they were far from the only ones to take a huge hit. Can’t remember the name anymore, but some of the nicest people I every had the privilege to work with went bankrupt in a single day, I had the opportunity to witness it first hand. Helped them wheel some power on their last day from Nova Scotia to the Midwest, the losses were immense. Wishing you and your family the best.

[@unclefrogy743]

that general discussion about the complication of power distribution is great. I am overwhelmed by the general description of just the high points It is a wonder that it works as well as it does. takes a lot of people working hard to keep it working

[@VlajCo-di8lc]

In my coundty we generally use 2 tariff model. From midnight to 08am off peak tariff with price of 4cents for Kilowatt hour. From 08Am to midnight we are in day tariff. Price during these hours are 16cents for kWh. Vat and other expenses are included. This is final price. Greetings from Belgrade, Serbia! Keep on going great job!

[@FoxDog1080]

The four power grids lived in harmony, western, eastern, Québec, and Texas But all that changed when the texas attacked

[@benoithudson7235]

Is Quebec going to have to be the hero? I'm not sure we have it in us.

[@StretchyDeath]

The Engineer is the only one who can master all four power grids.

[@vylbird8014]

The only reason Texas has their own power grid is because decades ago the state legislature determined that they would not be willing to accept federal regulation of their electrical infrastructure, such a thing being an afront to the independence of Texas. As that meant they couldn't be part of an inter-state grid, they had to make their own.

[@eriklarson9137]

"when the texas attacked" - Good point. I was unfamiliar with that.

[@FoxDog1080]

@@benoithudson7235 Quebec is air The hero is French

[@micke3035]

Now I've done a 5 clip binge watching so I'm once again up to speed on the current affairs of your resistance and life, I like your attitude and sober thinking and have done ever since I found you a couple of months back! On a side note, if we hadn't evolved in pace with the rest of the world and was some 1000 years behind we could've sent a "Congratulations party" in some longboats over to "Marge ah large C/o", the Vikings were splendid diplomats, very persuasive... All the best Vic and other freedom fighters in the US! //🇸🇪

[@didimos99]

Oh, you just did show my power plant @4:18 :) EC5 in Gdańsk, Poland :) Of course there is also some second possible source - nearby pumped storage power plant...

[@mlbrooks4066]

My company partly owned a pumped storage unit. Pumped storage is a peaking unit - pump water into an upper reservoir overnight while the cheaper base plants are running, reverse the pumps and make them generators during the day with the water running downhill into a lower reservoir when demand is higher and so are the prices you get. It keeps you from having to cycle your big base plants on and off, day and night, too. Advantages, but pumped storage takes up a whole lot of real estate.

[@MassiveGarbage]

​@@mlbrooks4066 I bet it doesn't take nearly as much space as solar though.

[@junkerzn7312]

You are a little behind the times here, Grady. Both California and Texas now have enough grid-scale battery storage online that, in fact, generated electricity does not have to be consumed instantly. The batteries soak it up, and then spit it out again during the evening peak. We're in the tens of gigawatt hours now, and starting to get into the double-digits in terms of gigawatts that can be dumped onto the grid or pulled off the grid by the battery systems. It's a big deal. In California, the cost of grid-scale storage is also not as expensive as people thought because the storage systems are removing the need to expand numerous very expensive transmission lines by de-congesting localized areas. Moss-landing for coastal transmission south of the Bay Area for example, and there are now several sierra foothills systems that have removed the need to string new tranmission lines. Billions of dollars worth of transmission line projects do not have to be built, now. And just as importantly, this means that fossil generation is no longer the go-to for regulating the grid. Fossil generation is now able to operate more efficiently because the grid-scale storage systems are handling the second-by-second regulatory duties to keep the grid stable. So fossil generation can be the rough-in and batteries take up the slack in either direction throughout the day, plus push energy back to the grid during the morning and evening peaks. Black-start and synchronization services can also be initiated from the Pacific Intertie HVDC line. These days there are numerous black-start capable sources that don't involve fossil plants per-say. You just need something to synchronize to and the thing is... fossil plants might need a long ramp to load up, but solar, wind, and batteries do not. There are now enough batteries and other resources on the grid to make it work. You can see battery regulation in action by looking at the CAISO real-time and historical data, very nicely presented to the public in graphs that you can select virtually any date to see (since they started storing it in online databases, anyway, but well over a decade now). -Matt

[@BEASTWRANGLER]

Then what was the crisis past months events where they rationed when EVs could not be charged? AS well the blackouts?

[@DoktorBayerischeMotorenWerke]

That is patentedly false and misleading, California no longer generates enough power for its own needs... power must be imported at higher costs and over greater distance and its associated wasted energy

[@junkerzn7312]

None of that nonsense is true. You guys need to stop believing the junk being spoon-fed to you on conservative outlets and start looking at and understanding the actual data. First, there has NEVER been any rationing of when EVs could charge. That bit of garbage just keeps getting more and more exaggerated every time someone brings it up. During a heat wave last summer during a typical flex alert it was simply suggested, along with a dozen other suggestions, that people avoid charging 4-9pm. Nothing more than that. No rationing, nothing mandatory, no laws, nothing. But somehow you bozos translate this to "rationing". Nor were there any blackouts. California's power is actually considered to be stable and reliable, particularly compared to Texas and the south. You wanna complain about reliability, California isn't a state you should be complaining about. Secondly, California has ALWAYS imported some electricity from other states. There has never been a year when California hasn't done that, and it has been part of nearby states economies for decades to over-produce so they could sell to California overnight. California over-produces during the day and under-producing overnight. And California also exports electricity, and there has never been a year when California hasn't done that either. Particularly during power emergencies in Southwestern states, and most notably California exported to many neighboring states during the great Texas Freeze (not to Texas since of course Texas is on its own grid. But many other states were adversely effected too). The imports have dropped significantly over the last 6 years as more battery storage comes online and is likely to continue to decline indefinitely as more and more storage is added. Which is actually a problem for neighboring states who are unable to subsidize their own local rates as much because of that. There is nothing magical or bad happening here, just a lot of garbage being fed to people who have not even the remotest clue how electricity even works. Part of the MAGA "own the libs" fantasy, I guess. Its sad that people even believe it. -Matt

[@macedindu829]

A couple of years back, a bunch of local electrical transmission towers were replaced with a different type of tower. The process required laying down all these railroad style rough lumber so that vehicles could access the area, pouring concrete for the new towers, tearing down the old towers, staging all the steel for the new towers, etc. Just in this local area, there were dozens or even hundreds of towers, and I just thought to myself "my god, each one of those has to be millions of dollars, maybe even tens of millions of dollars." When you consider the scale of the grid, it's truly mind blowing.

[@doktortodes]

17:48 Look at Odessa out there in a glowing red beacon. If I had a dollar for every transmission yard I built out there….oh wait I do

[@Flaccid_Banana]

Being a real time operator it is really great to see someone cover the majority of my job. We are the people working in the shadows 24/7 keeping everyone’s lights on. I let my coworkers know we should require all new hires to watch this video due to the great info. Thanks!!

[@jimv77]

0:45 Enron.....made me chuckle there.

[@MurCurieux]

As someone who lives in -40 C temps over the winter, I am so grateful for the grid and all the people that work hard to make it function. You guys are amazing!!!

[@iamglaze]

The intros gives me tingles sometimes. There's this childlike wonder in me that gets lit up whenever there's an interesting topic being introduced!

[@stevenutter3614]

Good for you buddy

[@stevenutter3614]

Thanks for sharing😊

[@rbryanhull]

Embrace that feeling of childhood wonder. It keeps us learning.

[@yoda112358]

I'm a staffer at a public utilities commission, thanks for producing these videos in a great general-audiences format that I can use to send to people to explain concepts.

[@jimbobur]

Coming from a country with fully deregulated power, water, gas... basically everything - I can tell you it's an idea that sounds good on paper but has been a disaster in practice.

[@3nertia]

That's because capitalism still exists and someone still has to pay privately owned corporations for the privilege heh

[@Luuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu]

It doesn't sound like a good idea on paper

[@flavvsdasilver6442]

Coming from a country with a completely monopolized and government-run national grid, it's not been sunshine and roses here either. Be warned, corruption will ruin your world - attack it with extreme prejudice...

[@qwerty112311]

It’s an impractical idea on paper because of the shared infrastructure. If power on the lines had a way to discriminate, then it would be practical.

[@Yura135]

@@qwerty112311 now just extend that analogy a bit... the earth is shared infrastructure, all land and natural resource rights are monopolies for that piece of land, and you will see why the current system is failing for the exact same reasons as an unregulated power grid.

[@bsidegirl9069]

Although you lost me a few times, I actually ended up with a much better grasp on how this whole system is reflected on our utility bills! I appreciate that!

[@mojobiel]

Economics is a key element of engineering. If it doesn't make financial sense it doesn't get built. Engineering is the application of combining economics and science.

[@jamesengland7461]

HAHAHA! Multitudes of things are built which make no sense.

[@atv182]

This is exactly the answer to every single complaint that gets brought up in my community's Facebook group. The answer to why is always money and the solution is either more money or volunteer. No one likes that answer haha

[@DetectiveRackham]

This is why some things simply must not be privatized. Your profits should not come at the expense of others’ health and lives. Having heathy and living population is also in the objective best interests of a country as well, which is all the more reason why those that do not consider it as being in their best interests are rightfully seen as irrational and third-world countries.

[@otm646]

What you don't understand is that economics are almost purely dictated by political policy, not by the cost of the engineering solution.

[@redhotcpep]

As a newbie to the industry I have been trying to understand the economics behind electricity pricing - this is a great video explaining the basics.

[@Froggability]

3:34 telegraph wires

[@yaltschuler]

Dang never knew that those looked like that...

[@kitesquid]

Could also be telephone wires. Definitely NOT power lines

[@pootispiker2866]

Those are most likely railroad codelines used by early CTC signalling systems. While possibly telegraph, it's likely not for telegraph messaging.

[@tedfisk1211]

I had no idea that power utilities had that type and many levels of complexity. Thank you for the explanation and I will have to listen to this video again. Wow.

[@merwindor]

6:45 And then Dasani comes along and pumps it all out and sells it for more.

[@ignaciogordillotorres]

This is such a wonderful 101, at least to me as someone with NO electrical or mechanical engineering background. And to have linked a few extra explanatory videos in the middle for further interest!

[@UolizKiona]

Yes, you did just display my power plant, EC5 in Gdańsk, Poland, at 4:18. Of course, a neighboring pumped storage power facility is another potential supply.

[@cs_fl5048]

This is the first video of yours I had to go back in spots to catch the complexity. Your explanations are so good that if I can't understand it the first time YOU explain it, it must be complex.

[@atv182]

I love these deep dives into the systems we take for granted. Im a water/wastewater engineer and understand that world pretty well. I'm lucky to have friends in lots of industries and I'm always reminded that things are never as simple as they seem. Gas, electricity, water, sewage, storm sewer, postal service, solid waste, roads, trains, air traffic, shipping, food, it all might as well be magic to the end consumer.

[@luppano]

I played Power To The People quite a lot and it really shows the complexity of production, distribution, and everything in between. Love this game.

[@David-lr2vi]

Just looked that game up. Sounds right down my alley (I work in the power sector and nerd out on that kind of stuff). Thanks for the heads up!

[@dthomason1630]

18:04 is a nice flyover of Chickamauga Dam on the Tennessee River in Chattanooga, TN.

[@noahalonge]

Wifey and I had to do a double take when we saw this!! We can literally hear the trains on Tenn Bridge from our house.

[@Phoenixz33]

The effects of this deregulation is fascinating and horrifying. Alright Grady, you've radicalized me. Nationalize the power grid!

[@forgingluck]

Thanks for the collab with that one dude that traced the power lines in gta, that was super cool

[@abxorb]

"Let the market decide, deregulate, it'll spawn efficiency and lower prices" is what we've been hearing since the neolib Reagan and Thatcher years, and look where it got us today. Soaring prices for everything, stagnant lower and middle class wages, growing wealth inequality and one housing or financial crisis after the other. Not to mention the impact it has on the planet. The only thing the market decides for itself with little to no regulations, is "more money for the shareholders no matter what".

[@microburn]

I’ve tried to understand electricity markets at a high level for a while. Your explanation of the economics of $0 solar/wind bids explains why everyone believes they are the cheapest option, despite ending energy prices paid by consumer not being that (unreliability means you must pay to maintain the peaker plant you rarely use, but must keep available for when solar/wind flop)

[@RushWasABand]

Wind and solar are indeed the cheapest. The part of the video you have mentioned has nothing to do with the actual levelized cost of production. The cost of batteries needed to make renewables work is what makes them expensive. But the cost of batteries are going down rapidly.

[@Mango0fDoom]

It seems crazy that aside from some specific scenarios, literally free electricity doesn't reduce prices - and you're often going to need peaker plants with an unreliable supply anyway. That seems a failure of the pricing structure. Free solar could power the entire grid for nothing, but a single watt from a natural gas plant put in and the electricity costs a fortune. In most industries, if you bring your manufacturing costs down you can lower final costs while still keeping a profit margin, so they get passed on to the consumer. Logically if you move from buying 1GWh at $20 MWh to $0 MWh, the consumer should get a cheaper price. Effectively solar etc can never reduce costs unless you can power the entire grid off them, and logically those companies have a very strong incentive to never ever achieve that.

[@Jack-fw4mw]

@@Mango0fDoom unless you are an industrial user, most of the cost of your electricity is all the effort to make sure it gets to you, not any incremental cost to produce the power.

[@sledgex9]

@@Mango0fDoom The incentive for efficiency and investment into free solar is still there for the power company vs the consumer. The power company has a lot of incentive to produce its power as cheaply as possible because it will get it a place in the bid of the day-ahead market. Once it get its place the power company will get a lot more that its generation cost because some other player will have placed last in the bid ranking. So the more cheaply it produces and the more capacity it has the greater the gain. Ultimately this will drag down the more expensive generators and the profit margins for the cheapest generators will become thinner. Simultaneously the cost to consumer will get smaller and smaller.

[@bcwbcw3741]

The presence of solar does reduce the average price because the amount of time the more expensive sources gets used is reduced. In the example given, the peaker plant is not used at all. You pay the peaker plant price only at peak times.

[@CelataForCongress]

Love this channel!!! I've learned so much over the years watching you Grady! You're doing great work while inspiring the next generation of engineers to build America's infrastructure! Please don't stop filming!!!!

[@MultiPetercool]

I lived through the rolling blackouts of the 2000s in California. Fortunately, I lived near Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and they never shut down that part of the grid so I was unaffected. PeopleSoft in nearby Pleasanton voluntarily ran their huge data center on their natural gas backup generators. Their accountants later determined that it was cheaper to run their generators than buy power from PG&E. I know because I worked there.

[@steve32627]

The rural co-op we use owns about 75-100mw of natural gas reciprocating generation (large 16 cylinder emergency generator style units). They run those in the summer several hours a week when the greater grid costs exceed their operational costs. I was reading a member newsletter that they've worked out better than expected and are running several hundred hours a year more than the original plan.

[@MassiveGarbage]

​@@steve32627 That's smart. I think more co-ops need to do this.

[@yorickdewid]

This video brings much needed clarification on how power is bought ans sold. Power is only getting more important and with that our understanding of what we pay for and when. Thanks Grady

[@cerulity32k]

4:30 Ah yes, the four directions.

[@volts420]

lol

[@johnny_eth]

I've been working in a TSO in Europe implementing the afrr bid handling for when the afrr market goes into 15 minute resolution. What is afrr? Automatic frequency restoration reserve. It's bids for power at the last minute (or hour) to regulate power production to correct mismatched between current power consumption and the predicted consumption on the day before. It's fun, complex and critical piece of infrastructure

[@Rorschach1024]

I have a story on this. Told to me by an engineer that worked for Duke Energy. There was a natural gas fuelled power plant in California that had been turning full bore to supply demand, when there was a sudden violent vibration that started in the steam turbine. They luckily were able to get it shut down before there was a catastrophic turbine blade failure. There were cracks in the turbine blade roots. There was a representative from the Governor's office on-site who insisted that they restart the turbine. The engineers and maintenance people tried very hard to explain to her why they could not do that, but she was not having any of it. They offered to restart an oil fired plant that was just down the road that was in cold shutdown because it had exceeded its emissions for the year, but was large enough to make up for the loss of the gas fired plant if the state was willing to waive the fines they would incurr for doing so. She was having none of that either. They told her that the only way they would restart the gas fired turbine was if she was willing to stand next to the turbine the entire time. They ended up restarting the idled oil fired plant, being charged fines for doing so, and folded the fines into the rates they charged for the power. This is what happens when you put ignorant political appointees in charge of things they know nothing about.

[@Rorschach1024]

It has been close to 20 years and my memory isn't as good as it used to be, it might have been a Relian Resources plant now that I think about it.

[@mrfirefighter360]

Just curious. What state was that?

[@generalprincecodyhedgewolf2944]

If I was a politician I’d Be like “Convert coal to Nuclear and call it a month And If two oil and Coal Power plants are out of commission from Emission limits fire it’s reactor up”

[@clawrunner]

@@generalprincecodyhedgewolf2944 the problem is that "firing its reactor up" can take days to weeks depending on whether they have the resources, and shutting the reactor down wastes ALL the fuel that's currently in the system, so the BEST option is to have it running 24/7 and then have other, faster power sources boot up and down to reach any extra demand

[@benoithudson7235]

Your Duke Energy engineer also caught a fish that was *THIS* big, I bet. It sounds like a story where some minor silliness happened, but the story wasn't fun enough without amplifying it up ten times.

[@nemesis851_]

For me in ALBERTA, Canada 95% ADMINISTRATIVE 5 % My actual usage --- Enmax makes over $$$$$ 31 MILLION / day in just our city !!!

[@frankchan4272]

Wind & solar still has maintenance costs so technically it’s still cost that spread over time. Solar is DC so it needs a rectifier to convert to AC which that system needs maintenance on. Also solar panels need to be cleaned occasionally to ensure those panels produce maximum amount of power. Wind needs to ensure that safety mechanisms are working properly as if the blades are going too fast they break the blade or mechanical system starting a fire. Also, solar is only available during the day so spare power can stored in batteries for use at night.

[@vylbird8014]

Wind turbine service interval is about once a year, sometimes twice - depends on the model. Offshore turbines are made to go longer, up to two years between routine servicing. So they do need maintenance, but not very much of it.

[@Br3ttM]

Wind and solar have most of the same costs whether or not the power is used, while a natural gas plant has relatively expensive fuel even compared to coal, but relatively cheap to construct. That means wind and solar are willing to sell for very low rates at certain times and days, knowing all their fixed costs get payed when prices are higher, while the gas plants only want to run when prices are high.

[@junkerzn7312]

@@Br3ttM Yes, coal and nuclear plants wind up operating at a loss during those periods of the day where solar is plentiful, because they just can't ramp-up and ramp-down all that quickly (or really much at all when it comes to nuclear. Even the nuclear plants designed to load follow can only do so within a very narrow range). Older gas plants are also no longer economic. GE had to scrap several mid-technology turbines because they literally became non-economic before they could even be built. Modern gas plants are starting to sport their own small battery systems in order to provide turbine support when they go on standby (instead of burning natural gas). Among other things. Wind and solar sites are starting to build their own rolling storage (aka flywheel units) which directly competes for inertia services. Fossil generation just doesn't have the flexibility to compete any more. It has gotten so bad in Texas's free-wheeling energy economy that Texas actually passed a number of laws explicitly designed to put fossil generation on life support so it would stay relevant. California has had similar service categories for over a decade now though it is interesting to see battery systems starting to make a serious impact on even those service categories. -Matt

[@BensEcoAdvntr]

I've given basically this presentation for the last ten years and I have to say you did an amazing job Grady. In fact, I might just show this video next time! Still have some location specific things to talk about here in the PJM Interconnection, but overall this is a great video.

[@EB_1059]

(0:22) Also, these rolling blackouts resulted in the successfull Recall of California's Governor. Leading to the election of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

[@MassiveGarbage]

Then more rolling blackouts happened and they tried to recall newsom lol. Guess that's what it takes to piss people off enough in California.

[@p3091992]

This was fascinating! Now at least I know something about a field I knew absolutely nothing about prior to watching this video. Thanks!

[@leggysoft]

Path of least resistance gets really funky when you're dealing with AC loads across a huge mesh. The load following speed and phase of the generators have a big impact otherwise your pull would be a simple resistor network from multiple current sources.

[@sonofasalesman]

I'll take a furry that suspiciously knows too much about engineering for 300 please

[@mqb3gofjzkko7nzx38]

Path of least impedance?

[@drkastenbrot]

@@mqb3gofjzkko7nzx38 no, this relates to the speed of u/f control by the suppliers. basically, as you turn on an appliance in your home, the exact sources of that power are different 1ms after turn on than they are 1s after turn on, as some power plants react faster than others. In the resistor network analogy you could reasonably approximate this with inductances on the supplier side.

[@gooseloose682]

ah yes, the calculations that drove me insane in school when it gets difficult.

[@rorobvojtechvikar9601]

Hey look a guy like me, likes engineering and furry what an couicidence

[@matt3109]

Amazing video! I had low expectations about this topic being as fascinating as it was! Another reason Grady is my favorite KZbinr.

[@g-rated-g]

As someone living in France, I am curious how much of this carries over. I know it's been decentralized, but I couldn't really say how

[@ribosoman593]

The EU market operates on the same principles. France has a few more kinks since it was virtually impossible for any producer to compete with EDF on price, which was nerfed but aside from regulated prices this does not directly affect the customer.

[@g-rated-g]

@@ribosoman593 Interesting. So why did they create Sowee?

[@kendallmangus5456]

Fellow Texan here, love your stuff. Keep it up brother

[@clintonroushff7068]

De regulation is complicated. We make changes and not sure how things will be effected. When the process fails in intended ways we don't have an answer. Good video

[@adamengelhart5159]

Where I live (Minneapolis), the power utility has a program where customers can sign up to purchase 100% renewable power. They even show you the fuel credit amount and net increase for renewable generation on your bill. It ends up being about 5% for me. Well worth it, by my lights.

[@aaronbegg3827]

They had that in New Zealand. I moved to New England and I miss that level of transparency, it's definitely worth the extra money to me

[@vylbird8014]

Yep. And then the power company buys that renewable power which they were going to buy anyway because it's cheapest and just arrange the paperwork so customers on other plans get more coal power.

[@qwerty112311]

You’re not purchasing renewable power. You’re paying extra money for nothing. You aren’t making a change. It really shows a lack of knowledge about how the grid works. The power lines, which carry all the energy, can’t tell the difference between renewable and non renewable energy. You are absolutely, without question, beyond any doubt, using non-renewable power, no matter what the utility shows you. They just find the part of their network that gets energy from a renewable source and tell you that’s where your power came from. It’s a lie and they’re making a fool of you. And you’re making a fool of yourself by believing it and bragging about it.

[@blaydCA]

​@@qwerty112311 Incorrect: Electric is bought by BID and long term contracts. If a customer is willing to pay more, the utility will obtain renewable at the higher cost and bypass the non-renewable bidder. Problems only arise IF the grid is overloaded and renewable can't be put on.

[@qwerty112311]

@@blaydCAturns out you don’t know anything either. Electrons don’t hit the utility’s database of who is paying extra before deciding to pass through the meter. They pass the meter regardless - wind, solar, battery, coal, gas, anything. The only way to guarantee your source is go off grid or micro grid where all input sources are of a known type. Cope all you want, but it doesn’t change physics.

[@russjames316]

I'm an aeronautical engineer and find your rational explanations of the world very enlightening. As an irrelevant side note, Grady your beard looks great. Keep up the good work!

[@feynthefallen]

I must have seen dozens if not hundreds of videos on this channel, and no topic, no matter how complicated, has ever swamped my mind as much as this power markets business. QED: I have the mind of an engineer, not a bean counter.

[@Scrawlerism]

"deregulation" is not what keeps the balance. Every place it's been deregulated is seeing higher electric prices and consolidation of control to fewer companies. Deregulation and a "free market" always sees this pattern.

[@Toramt]

One issue with the lake analogy: As long as there is a unit of water available in the buffer (lake), customer is happy. A supplier in that scenario is incentivized to sell X and contribute

[@blaydCA]

There's still a little buffer in electric generation. The equipment has set parameters it has to stay in so customer's devices don't get damaged. If it goes outside of set points utility equipment trips out. Solar and wind generation keep grid operators very busy with keeping things stable. ERCOT has a chart showing reg up/reg down.

[@MassiveGarbage]

​@@blaydCA Seems to me like it would make more sense for wind and solar to just be hooked up to batteries and then feed into the system as needed. But I guess that would be astronomically more expensive than it already is. I don't particularly like wind power but it just makes more sense to me to do it like this.

[@blaydCA]

@@MassiveGarbage They do use batteries as a buffer now to some degree, but those batteries don't hold very much compared to a utility scale solar or wind farm. Solar is far more difficult than wind to predict with cloud movement in and out. Wind changes gradually and the turbines have some inertia with minor speed changes.

[@sophiaisabelle027]

Glad y'all did proper research on this. It's about time we become more informed on this topic.

[@rkramer5629]

In Ohio, my energy broker says about 80% of my juice is nuclear with the rest wind, solar, and NG. It’s really cheap and almost entirely “clean”. Nukes FTW!!!

[@erikdietrich2678]

Nuclear still needs a supply of fuel. And that fuel is cheaper now because of lower demand, but if demand were to increase, and it needed to be imported from Central Asia (where a significant fraction is mined), nuclear power could get very expensive. Solar and wind don't have those specialized inputs.

[@avg.player]

​@@erikdietrich2678 ...as opposed to solar panels that are mainly produced in China?

[@captainheat2314]

​@@erikdietrich2678solar panels still need to be made just like nuclear plants and you need a lot more of them and batteries to be as good as nuclear

[@killpidone]

​@@erikdietrich2678 the ROI on nuclear BTFOs the ROI on wind and solar, they're not even close in watts per square footage.

[@jamesdurtka2709]

​@erikdietrich2678 I for one welcome our Chinese overlords. Regardless, nuclear pretty much has to be part of any long-term solution to climate change - solar panels and wind will never produce enough on their own to replace carbon-emitting power generation

[@colormedubious4747]

I get my power from: 70% - my roof. 30% - my electric co-op, who gets most of their power from: several modest solar projects and a watershed management authority, who gets their power from: a series of smallish hydroelectric dams, a minor interest in a nuclear power plant on the Gulf coast, a medium-sized wind farm, and a massive coal power plant.

[@Rocket39Smoke14]

California just needs a bigger Lithium Battery. Problem solved.

[@Luckyduck10]

More like better government

[@bmodoryx]

@@Luckyduck10 like Texas, right? /s

[@chillbro1010]

They could use dam water as a battery. Oh wait, they just went through 8 droughts while I typed this.

[@MrFrenchyge]

The dollars are what turn regular engineering into *practical* engineering.

[@msromike123]

Electrons flowing is a concept for the most basic understanding. The electrons excited at the generation source create an EMF that propagates at the speed of light to the lower potential, by in turn exciting neighboring electrons. In a DC circuit the actual electrons drift very slowly at around a mm/sec. In an AC system, like we are talking here, they basically never move at all. The AC circuit electrons just transfer energy via excitation of their neighbors. Not sure how easy that would be convey in a KZbin vid, but it certainly has nothing to do with filling a lake and taking water out a distance away. If anything it is like multiple power plants creating waves in the water, and you collecting wave energy at a remote location without physically removing the water. But even that analogy is poor, since it doesn't account for how the EMF field voltage decreases based on how many loads are collecting the EMF energy. If there is too much load, all waves in the system fall to a lower size (voltage) at the speed of light.

[@faintsmile3279]

even tho what you are saying is true this has to be one of the most retarded comments ive seen in youtube over the years

[@jamesengland7461]

You're missing the entire point. Grady's analogy is correct as it pertains to the grid market.

[@jakepassolt9640]

That's actually a really good point. However I do think the lake analogy is simple and translates well enough, especially to people that don't already understand electricity. I see the lake analogy as a reference to power, not electrons. A power plant produces power by pushing and pulling electrons like you said, but the energy is still spread out along the grid and we tap into it. The individual electrons that power my phone did not come from a power plant but the energy used to push the electrons from the anode to the cathode of my phone battery was produced there.

[@jakepassolt9640]

​@@faintsmile3279not at all, what he said was objectively correct, but I think it misses the point of making an intuitive analogy

[@msromike123]

​@@jakepassolt9640 Perfect!

[@jer103]

I'm from St Cloud, MN. There's a coal burning power plant 20 miles away, a nuclear power plant 30 miles away(in my hometown), and a small hydroelectric plant on the Mississippi river, in town. I don't pay electricity, and is just part of the rent for a one bedroom. So, I'm not exactly sure where my power comes from.

[@kjdude8765]

It comes from all 3, its all interconnected.

[@jakepassolt9640]

I live in Minneapolis, I used to work for Xcel and I've been to the Monticello nuclear plant. The analogy in the video of a lake with a bunch of houses pulling water out and 3 or 4 big facilities pumping water into the lake is pretty spot on. Your are tapping into the electrical grid, which is interconnected with the whole region. Minnesota produces about 15-20% of its power from nuclear so that's about how much of your power comes from Monticello, or prairie Island for that matter.

[@jer103]

I would imagine the power goes to where it's needed most, in the closest city. St Cloud is the biggest city that is closest to the source of the power. Yet, power is produced by many sources. It's just interesting that electrical power can produce many ways, be in the grid, and anyone can pull the energy needed from it.

[@jeremiahshoemaker9512]

The nearest plants to you would be Sherco in Becker, and Xcel Monticello Nuclear in Monticello. There was Great River Energy RDF in Elk River too, but that shut down a few years ago...

[@golemofiron7250]

@@jer103theoretically it would, that’s how physics works (as far as I know)

[@mlbrooks4066]

Thanks for this. It's a good explanation of what happens now but a nightmare to those of us who actually lived this transition and tried to deal with it. I was a lawyer for an electric company from 1981 into the Enron fiasco (I did not work for Enron). I was involved in the "deregulation" efforts. The original goal was to deregulate everything in the chain, including distribution. The crash of Enron disrupted the deregulation drive. The transmission grids came about because to the giant outage in New York in the 1960s, when power companies realized they could support one another in times of need (forget Texas for the moment - that's another can of worms). I'm struggling to explain myself and my thinking because the complexity of the deregulated market makes any human's brain do the bunny hop and in a way encourages the all-American goal of making lots of money for doing, making, or selling nothing. Balancing and maintaining the grid in a deregulated market must be an engineer's nightmare. Back when the grid was first deregulated they developed a four-level system for determining what needed to be done if the grid became stressed. I don't know if ithey still operate that way, and I don't remember which levels addressed brownouts and load shedding, but I do still have my Level 5 emergency kit my company gave us to deal with that "uh-oh - we're beyond handling the integrity of this grid" eventuality. It's a flashlight.

[@balaam_7087]

I’m unhappy with my electricity-if I walk back into the power plant holding a D battery, do you think I could return it? Or do I absolutely need the original receipt?

[@volvo09]

They won't accept returns without the original packaging 😂

[@jsbrads1]

Some grids allow people to use power when they want and you can return it at another time at no cost.

[@balaam_7087]

@@jsbrads1for real? That’s fascinating, I absolutely did not know that.

[@jsbrads1]

@@balaam_7087 it was more common at the beginning of home solar, many of those grids have had so many people add solar that it started to risk base demand and the grid stability so many of the grids have reversed their policies, but a few electrical suppliers still have that policy.

[@cruisinguy6024]

@@balaam_7087I think they're referring to grid connected solar. The solar panels on your roof are connected to the grid. Whatever you're not using in your home is "sold" to the grid. Alternatively another solar installation is to have your home fully self sufficient meaning you now need a way to *store* energy in the form of a large battery bank. This is more expensive to install due to battery and inverter costs however the power can go out and you can continue life as normal. During the day during peak generation you're still able to sell extra energy to the grid. This is all done automatically of course.

[@AvidSurvivalist]

I have only one provider and it's a Cooperative. My bill has separate charge categories. It has a Generation and Transmission, then it also has a basic service charge and distribution charge. Adds up to 0.14337 a kwh. There's also an environmental tax, franchise tax, and universal service program fee.

[@Olliethelabradane]

I recently bought your book and thoroughly enjoy reading it with your voice in my head.

[@bordershader]

I'm a junior/part-qualified accountant and found it fascinating how the marginal cost is calculated dynamically. Your explanation was spot on.

[@ross302ci]

The auction explanation was so helpful! What a fascinating system. Also a somewhat unnerving reminder as a fellow Texan how bad our asinine wholesale system bit us a few winters ago. Here's to hoping we make it through this one.

[@Senthiuz]

Two points from Oklahoma. There's a plan to smuggle SPP power across the border to prop up the Texas grid. Some Texas hedge fun guy wants to build a pumped storage facility in SE OK that would charge the resivoir with relatively reliable power of the Eastern Interconnection. Then when Texas gets fucky, run power down a dedicated line to Paris, TX. This would be cool if they weren't going to dam a river and use eminent domain to build a project that doesn't benefit Oklahoma. Also, we have a $5 charge on gas bills for the next 15 years from the 2021 storm to bail out the gas companies. Back to social welfare for the rich and rugged individualism for the poor.

[@mlbrooks4066]

@@Senthiuz Isn't SE OK fairly flat? How are they going to put a pumped storage unit in there? And they are only peaking units, too, not base load units. Sounds like somebody's been talking to Elan Musk or Dr. Oz.

[@ross302ci]

@@Senthiuz Thanks for the insight. I hadn't heard of the pumped storage plan, I'll have to read up on it.

[@arishsiddiqui3292]

Brady has literally summed up one of my Master's course into a single 20 minutes video. Thank you.

[@alveolate]

i am not sure at all, but once you mentioned "middlemen" i can't help but wonder how much cost they're adding to the system. even if the "service" they provide is navigating and negotiating a complex market, that just shifts the source of additional cost upstream to the complicated market. wouldn't a nationalised utility do better?

[@IntrusiveThot420]

Probably. There's probably some ideal balance of bureaucratic overhead, market involvement to stimulate innovation, and state control to provide stable services to citizens.

[@Mail-Ordered]

You have it backwards, you are the one paying more not the providers. But even then, we did have a nationalized system and we voted to remove it (I think around the red scare era). I'm not well red enough to say if it would holistically be better or not but at the moment the middlemen are necessary because the power plant absolutely does not want to deal with the individual customer that needs only 30 kWh.

[@MassiveGarbage]

Not sure if you have paid attention to the government but they somehow never have enough money to cover the costs. There is a reason we are in massive unpayable debt.

[@alveolate]

@@MassiveGarbage not sure if you have paid attention to the government but they somehow ALWAYS dump multiple hundred billions into the pentagon who then subsequently fails multiple audits.