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Where Our Power Comes From

Where Our Power Comes From Script

(Part 1: The Fuels)

Flip the switch and the light comes on. Plug in your smart phone to charge. Put your slice of bread in the toaster and a minute later it pops up nicely browned.

Where does the electricity come from that makes our lives so easy?

Let’s take a look.

Across New England there are more than 350 power-generating facilities. These are places making electricity from a variety of fuels, including Natural Gas, Nuclear, Renewables, moving water, Coal, and Oil.

To give you an idea of how the different types of fuel fit together in the picture: on a day this month – December 3rd – 45% of the region’s energy was coming from natural gas, 37% from nuclear, 11% from renewables, 6% from Hydro, and 1% from coal.

These percentages demonstrate a significant shift in the region’s preferred fuel source, with the last ten-to-fifteen years seeing a dramatic increase in dependence on natural gas. In 2000 roughly 15% of New England’s electricity was created from natural gas – in 2013 it was up to 46%.

That’s a big leap.

In fact, demand for natural gas now has risen so high that it’s outstripped the pipeline capacity, which is the big reason that electric power costs are projected to rise substantially this winter – the generation facilities need more natural gas than we can fit through the pipes, particularly the pipelines coming in from New York and Pennsylvania.  

It’s also important to know that while most of the electricity we use is generated here in New England, some of it is imported.  In 2013, about 14% was brought in from outside the region, with the largest portion of that coming from Canada.

(Part 2: The Grid)

All this electricity gets to your home or business through the power grid. This is the transmission network of power lines and transformers and substations.

What the grid can’t do is store energy. It’s not like a battery that can hold a charge until you need it. The grid passes energy from generators to consumers pretty much in real time. Which means it has to be continually managed – and managed very carefully. When demand rises, more energy needs to be fed into the grid. When demand drops, energy in the grid needs to be reduced.    

And demand changes day and night, hour by hour – depending on many factors. When it’s hot, demand rises as many people turn on air conditioners. When it’s late at night demand falls as most people turn out lights and appliances and go to bed.

So what kind of mastermind can predict and track these continuous fluctuations? Turns out, there is a public interstate agency whose job is to do just that. It’s called ISO New England. That’s the Independent System Operator.

You can think of the ISO as an air traffic controller for New England’s energy grid. They are impartial about fuel type, they don’t own the transmission cables or the power plants, and they don’t sell the electricity. Their key mission is to monitor the power grid and tell power plants to turn on when demand rises, and to shut down when demand falls.

Their biggest monitoring station is in Holyoke Massachusetts, but there are six smaller control centers around the region.

(Part 3: The Utilities)

For the South Coast, Cape Cod, and the Islands, two utility companies deliver all our electricity: National Grid and NStar. They own most of the hardware that makes up the transmission network – all those power lines and transformers and substations.

No matter who you buy electricity from – and you can buy it from an independent, often smaller power supplier, like Cape Light Compact – that electricity still comes to you over the wires owned and maintained by your utility company. If you check your electric bill, you’ll see that a portion of the cost you pay each month is a “transmission fee.” That’s because you’re not only paying for the electricity that use, but you’re paying for the upkeep of the power grid.  

And if the power grid is running the way it should, the only thing you have to think about when your toast pops up is: what kind of jam to put on it.