Power Economics

Chapter 2Stabilizing Demand

Your energy costs depend largely on how much energy you use. Yet there is another critical factor in the equation. It's called demand stabilization, and it's incredibly important, both to your checkbook and to our planet's long-term health.

Why is stabilizing demand essential? Let's take a step back and look at the big picture. In the United States, we take electricity for granted. When we flip a switch or push a button, we expect whatever device we're using to begin working instantaneously.

But most of us never think about what's going on behind the curtain. Generating electricity and delivering it safely to your home or business is a complex endeavor involving thousands of interrelated processes working together smoothly and seamlessly.

Here's an excerpt from the US Energy Information Administration website that summarizes the complexity of the task:

Electricity is generated at power plants and moves through a complex system, sometimes called the grid, of electricity substations, transformers, and power lines that connect electricity producers and consumers. Most local grids are interconnected for reliability and commercial purposes, forming larger, more dependable networks that enhance the coordination and planning of electricity supply.¹

In the United States, the entire electricity grid consists of hundreds of thousands of miles of high-voltage power lines and millions of miles of low-voltage power lines with distribution transformers that ...