What do they think their doing and who do they think their fooling?

Question

I'll give you a senario, my grandpa lives in indiana. His house is a ten minute drive to the coal plant nearby, yet he pays alot of money for his electric bill. Why might you ask. well when i checked up on the reason i made an interesting discovery. the powerplant is sending its energy, all of its energy, to Chicago, there are at least three plants i know of up there, at least one thats nuclear.

This brought my attention to the fact that all of the power plants are shipping there energy to places that are either far or, they can't ship it all. this wasts energy at a prodigal scalle, its basic Ohms people, i need to know what can be done about this that will change this waste of valuable energy and fuel.

Answer 1

You're probably stuck with it. I live near Niagara Falls and don't get any of their power. I used to live in the Catskill Mountains and we had beautiful reservoirs of water but could not boat or fish in the water or use it for our drinking water. It was the drinking water for New York City which was two hours away.

Answer 2

The energy industry is highly regulated by the government and what your grandpa pays is more dependant on what these regulatory agencies allow the power companies to charge than by actual logistics.
Check out this website as it explains a lot about the power grid and power generation and distribution.

http://www.anl.gov/Media_Center/logos22-1/electricity.htm

Answer 3

I am confused by your comment about "shipping electricity".

Generally the power network is a large grid with many power plants putting power in and many consumers taking it out. Who puts it in and where its taken out is only a financial thing. The actual electron flow generated will not be dictated by economics and will not travel great distances if their easy path is short.

Hope that explains

Answer 4

if some one futher away is paying more for the energy then shipping costs dont count.