What is the deal with the electric companies always tring to get people to conserve power? Is there a shortage? Dont they make a profit on the rate of consumption? Now I’m all for conserving energy but I dont understand why the electric co would want us to use less of their “product”. Whats the striaght dope on this?
The more power people use, the more capacity the utility company needs. When you conserve electricity, the company doesn’t need to spend money on new power plants and whatnot. Also, utilities are under constant pressure to minimize and/or reduce emissions, which is also easier if they’re running below capacity. Finally, it may be that some power companies (especially municipal utilities) are statutorily required to make such efforts.
And in California, at least, there’s enough of a shortage that no utility wants to face deliberately blacking out paying customers again.
Each power company can generate a limited amount of electricity. Places like California have problems because of environmental opposition to new power plants, but even places that have “adequate” power generating capabilities can still have problems. The problems usually occur during the hot summer days, when industries are running at their usual heavy production (as they do all year round) plus you have all of these residential air conditioning units and such working harder than normal. The extra residential load can sometimes push a utility company past its production capabilities. In the old days, something like this would just cause a brownout or a blackout, but these days all of the power systems are tied together in a huge grid. So, if Joe Bob’s power company can’t make enough juice, it simply buys power from Jimbo’s power company next door since they are all connected on the grid. Now maybe Jimbo can’t provide him any power (since he’s in the same heat wave) but Santa’s power company way up north isn’t in the heat wave so he’s got juice to spare. Since they are all in a grid, Santa supplies more power to Jimbo, and Jimbo sends it on to Bob, and Bob has to pay Santa for the extra power.
Now of course it costs more for Bob to buy his power from Santa than it does for him to make it himself, so he would prefer not to do this if at all possible. It’s also not a good idea to run your power system that close to maximum capability, because power generators do occaisonally fail for some reason and have to be taken down and repaired, and if the rest of the system plus whatever you can get from the grid isn’t enough, then your customers lights go out.
So, they advertise a bit and try to prevent overloading their systems during the summer when it is really hot. These are the same people that advertise electric heat pumps so they get to charge you money when it gets cold too, so you’re right, they are after your money.