Electricity 101

Managing supply and demand, ensuring a reliable electrical grid

Welcome back to Electricity 101. Over the last several months, we’ve discussed how power is generated and sent to homes and businesses. We’ve also looked at how people use electricity in their homes and how they can use that energy efficiently.  

Now we’re going to zoom out a take a big-picture look at the electrical grid. The grid is an interconnected network that comprises the generation plants, transmission lines and distribution lines we’ve discussed. 

Balancing the amount of electricity being put into the grid, called generation, and the amount of electricity being taken from the grid, called load, is crucial to maintaining reliability and sustainability on the grid. The grid needs to have the same amount of electricity put into it as customers are using or taking from it.  

But utilities don’t always generate the exact amount of electricity their customers are using. Sometimes utilities need more power than they can produce if, for example, they have a generation plant down for maintenance. And sometimes, for example on a very windy day, they may be able to produce more power than they need.   

 So, how do they handle those situations?  

Balancing supply and demand

OPPD is part of a regional transmission organization known as the Southwest Power Pool (SPP). The organization coordinates the markets in all or parts of 14 states, from Montana to Texas. It helps ensure the reliability of the regional electrical grid.

Energy marketers help forecast the amount of electricity utilities will need for any given day based on several factors, including weather, previous electricity usage patterns and more.  

Energy markets match customer demand for electricity with the generation sources that member utilities have readily available to ensure reliable power, adequate transmission and competitive wholesale electricity prices. 

So if OPPD needs more power than it can produce on a given day, it can purchase that power through the SPP market. And on days when OPPD is capable of producing more power than it needs, it can sell that power through the same market. 

To learn more about how this process works, check out the video below. 

And come back in a couple weeks, when we’ll discuss power outages and the outage restoration process.