How is your country's electricity industry structured? - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: AlbertL
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: February 27, 2022, 05:38:23 pm
content: In the USA, well, it's a little bit of everything. When you consider the components of generation, transmission and distribution separately, there's an almost infinite number of possibilities, and we seem to have all of them. We have private, federal and even local ownership and operation of assets, with regulation by various federal, state, local and industry organizations.

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: February 27, 2022, 07:42:35 pm
content: The UK has a collection of generators that have an auction the day before on the price for the next day. Each area has a distributor the DNO distribution network operator. The actual billing is done by anyone down to a supermarket. It's a bit of a mess here too all held together by the national grid organization that controls it sort of.

author: Fflint
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 04, 2022, 02:24:29 pm
content: In Poland it is similar to other countries in EU (I imagine). We have a sort of "stock exchange" for electricity that runs 24/7 365 days. There megawatt hours are traded between producers, large consumers and distributors that sell it to smaller customers. On this exchange there are various financial instruments traded. There is spot price, there are futures. Just like on a stock market.We are also connected to the EU energy grid and in 2020 11% energy was imported and 4% exported.Regarding generation all numbers given here are not "capacity installed", but actual percentage of energy produced and used. If we consider capacity installed the numbers for renewables look much better (on paper).The huge majority of production is large coal fired power plants (both kinds of coal) which account for 75% of all energy used in 2020. Each year the share of energy produces from coal is less and less(80% in 2019) as per the hydrocarbon replacement policy. Then there is a bit over 9% from gas. 11% of energy used in 2020 was from renewables (mostly wind, but also solar including prosumers and small producers), and finally approximately 2% hydro (numbers rounded).We have 6 energy distributors each operating in a different area of the country. Most consumers buy the energy from their distributors, but it is possible to just pay the distributor for delivery and pay for the energy from some other provider. Energy costs for consumers are set by the providers, but the government regulator monitors them to avoid monopolistic practices etc.For prosumers (with their solar panels etc) there is a system where the grid is considered "free storage". Basically you send all your power excess to grid which you can then use later. You pay 10% power penalty for this. However this is difficult to implement with large numbers of prosumers (too much power at one time, not enough in another).So this year the system changes. Prosumers will sell the excess power at market price (at a time) and buy when they need it. This lowers the profitability of PV installations significantly, but those that already have PV have a 10 year guarantee of the old rules. Only newly installed systems are under new rules.Most places get their energy as 3 phase, 230V phase to ground voltage. Most devices up to few kW are single phase. Induction hobs etc are two phase. Water and House heaters are usually 3 phase. Usual power connected to an average single family home is around 20~40kW.

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: March 04, 2022, 11:06:42 pm
content: UK energy mix can be seen in real time at gridwatch.co.uk, home solar installs are not included as they are not live monitored so show up as a lower demand. Last estimate I saw was that actual solar is double the live reporting (I generate 6MWh/y for example)