Talk:Electric power industry

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In most places in this article we're talking about electric ENERGY, not electric power. Energy is what electric companies sell, while "power" has identical meaning to "flow rate of energy." If it was water, would we talk about the supply of water, or the supply of "flow?" Watts are the flow rate, JOULES are what is flowing. For so many years we've been wrongly saying "Electric Power companies" rather than "Electric energy companies" that now the correct terminology sounds weird, while the wrong words sound safe and normal.
 * I agree with you up to a point. Power Companies sell both power and energy.  A typical two part tariff has prices for both kWh (energy) and kW (rate at which energy is used).  Tiles 07:44, 26 Jul 2004 (UTC)
 * I intend to move this article to Electrical supply, write here a more technical treatment of Electric power (Watts, Watt-hours ect), then sort through the current set of links to this page and sort them to the proper one. DV8 2XL 20:34, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
 * What is your reasoning in changing the title of this article? In the USA, I would expect that electric power would be one of the first terms a reader would search for when looking for this subject. I see that mains electricity might be a common term in the UK. The main components of the electrical energy industry are entitled electricity generation, electric power transmission, electricity distribution and electricity retailing.--C J Cowie 00:26, 29 November 2005 (UTC)


 * I checked the Tiles reference and there is no useful information on the point in his electrical section. In the US, as far as I know, there are two ways Demand power is computed, the old way and the new way.  The old way uses either a 30 min or a 15 minute time period, and the new way uses a 1 or 2 minute time period.  At the beginning of the period a record is made of the accumulated energy used (proportional to the kilowatt-hours used up to the start since the meter was last reset) and then after the time period a record (these records are not saved, they're just used will the measurement is being made- think of them as registers (or variables)in a computer program)of the accumulated energy used (as before) is made.  The difference between these two records represents the energy passing through the meter (in effect) for that period of time.  Now, so far, everything is in units proportional to energy, not power.  Of course we know the length of time from the first record to the second record.  So we could get a number proportional to power by dividing the energy usage (over the time period) by the time period (say 1/30 of an hour), and then multiplying the result by the appropriate scaling factor (the dials on meters do not show units of kilowatt-hours directly- at least the older ones don't) to bring the result to kilowatts.  These scale factors are shown on your electrical bill.  Now of course it doesn't make sense to have a division and then a multiplication, so these are rolled into on proportionality factor.  Okay, where are we?  Demand (peak power) is tracked by measuring energy consumption over some (small) period of time and computing an average peak power over that period of time.  How is this information used when computing your bill?  Well, the meter stores only one reading for the entire period between readings of the meter.  At the beginning of a billing month, the Demand meter is read and reset (that means set to 0)- this a number that will be updated (a new value stored, or the old value kept) after each computation which follows each small period of time.  After reseting it reads and holds as a temporary record the energy meter reading, and starts counting off the first small period (say 2 minutes) of time.  After the small period of time has elapsed, the energy meter reading is taken, the difference with the previous reading is computed, and the result is compared with the stored demand record (initially 0) and that stored demand record is upated with the larger of the current value of this demand record with the just computed value.  At the end of the billing cycle the process repeats, i.e. the demand record is read (it now contains a number proportional to power corresponding to the small period of time during which the greatest use of electrical energy occurred since the demand meter was last reset- say a month ago). Your bill (if your usage is high enough that such a meter has been installed) will then have a separate charge proportional to your demand or peak (again over the short period of time) usage.  The demand charges can be very large- a third of the entire bill might be a reasonable general estimate.


 * By the way, you can't get this information from your friendly power company (ConEd in my case)- they won't let you talk to anyone who really understands what is going on in detail, and who can converse using proper engineering terms. The blather you'll get will drive anyone but the most patient of engineers totally bonkers.  You have to call the manufacturers of demand meters and get to someone who actually understands how these systems work before you can get the truth.  I spent those hours on the phone.  I have a pretty good idea of what's going on.  Sorry if that sounds a little strong, or too defensive.  blackcloak 05:37, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

The first poster on this page gave the reason: electrical power is a term in electrical engineering and physics first. It's colloquial miss-use in North America for electricity delivered by a power distribution system should not be allowed to push the proper meaning to the background. Of course a disambig link would go at the top. DV8 2XL 00:46, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Is the term electrical supply established as the appropriate term in some context? I don't believe that the term electric power is entirely miss-used. In an electrical supply system, the service provided is actually a continuous flow of electrical energy that is converted from fossil fuels etc. as required and converted to mechanical energy, heat etc. as it is received by the user.--C J Cowie 01:13, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
 * English being English, use determines meaning and I won't say that the current name is wrong in a general sense. Perhaps I didn't select the best name to stand in for the proposed new article, however I just can't think of any term to replace Electrical power in the engineering sense, and I do think we need that topic covered. Also as far as it goes here in the present treatment, I would say that this article needs a lot of work to bring it up to standards DV8 2XL 01:48, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
 * I missed the point that you intended to convert the use of the Electric power title to apply to an electric power engineering topic. I think that a lot of the material you might have in mind is distributed among other articles such as AC power, Power factor, Power (physics) and Three-phase power. It might be appropriate to use the Electric power article to introduce various aspects to electrical energy utilization in layman's terms and refer the reader to other articles for more technical detail.--C J Cowie 02:19, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
 * That is precisely what I intended to do. Yes the material is covered in detail in those other articles, but in very heavy detail what I hoped here was the version that would be accessible to the senior high school student. But, damn you {;-) I'm doubting the name of the entry to move the current content to. Any suggestions? DV8 2XL 02:27, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
 * I think that most of the current content could be moved to Electricity retailing, but Electricity industry might be a better title to include commerce topics beyond retailing. Perhaps some outlining is called for at this point.--C J Cowie 02:52, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

I think that the term "electric power" is commonly used in a very correct manner. The average person knows what a 60 watt light bulb is. He understands that leaving it on for a longer period of time uses more "electricity", and more money, than using it for a short period of time. He understands that a 1200 W hair dryer uses "electricity" very fast and should not be turn on for very long. Electric utilities build power plants based on rated MW, not so much MWh. Energy is important as well, but don't dismiss the importance of power.Whquaint 03:09, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

"Capacitive circuits cause reactive power with the current waveform leading the voltage wave by 90 degrees, while inductive circuits cause reactive power with the current waveform lagging the voltage waveform by 90 degrees" You meant to say perhaps that inductive circuits cause direct power???

As a result of reading through this article I have found it to be an inaccurate representation of the historical facts, something which is a Wikipedia issue of accuracy and credibility. There is also a level of bias in the way it is written, with no mention of Edison's excellent work undertaken in the UK in which his Holborn Viaduct Power Station was working earlier than his Pearl Street Power Station. Accordingly I have corrected this and put the correct chronological order of electricity supply scheme commissionings. Given the level of discussion as to the choice of title I would suggest that it is changed to Electricity Supply Industry as a more accurate representation of what it is meant to describe. Also provided are some references. aquizard 19:45, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Missing Equations
Under Ohms law there are three equations to calculate power in a circuit.

P= IV -- Example: 2 amps * 12 volts = 24 watts

P = I^2 * R -- Example: (2 amps * 2amps) * 6 ohms = 24 watts

P = V^2 / R -- Example: (12 volts * 12 volts) / 6 ohms = 24 watts


 * Note: the above editor has now added those equations to Electric power, so all is well. --Heron 17:35, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

power vs energy
The term 'power' is mis-used generally in this entry, notwithstanding the common usage of the word 'power' by electricity consumers. What is being consumed is electric energy, and most billing is based on the amount of energy passing through the customer's meter. It's true that electric 'power' is often also a basis of a different type of billing, but this is generally reserved as a proxy by utilities to cover the fixed costs of providing sufficient scale of equipment to service the maximum number of Amps supplied to the consumer, and is typically applied only to larger commercial or industrial consumers. This load is equivalent to the 'power' provided to the customer, and is measured in MW (often with a correction to compensate for the customer's inductive load). Let's be consistent with physics: power (or load) is measured in MW, and is equivalent to water pressure in a pipe; energy is measured in MWh, and is equivalent to the amount of water that passes through the pipe.


 * Caution, errors above. Power is measured in watts, or megawatts (MW) if you prefer.  Load is usually a resistance, or a measure of a receiving electrical device's capacity to absorb electrical energy/power.  Resistance has units of volts per ampere, or volt-sec/coulomb.  A key point in computing the actual power delivered during any sufficiently small interval of time is knowing the actual voltage and the actual current during that interval of time.  For a resistive load, the voltage and current cycles are in phase, both going to zero twice per cycle at exactly the same instant in time.  So, during the instant of the "zero crossing" no power is delivered to the load, since power delivered is the product of current and voltage.  As for the analogs, water pressure is the analog of voltage. The amount of water passing through a pipe, or flow rate, (gallons per second) is the analog of current.  Water is the analog of coulombs.  Electrical power is therefore the analog of a quantity proportional to the product of water pressure and flow rate (call it hydrolic power), and really only of interest in devices designed to accept and convert this power to some other form of power, like a hydrolic motor.  And finally, electrical energy is the analog of "hydrolic energy," the product of the hydrolic power and the time over which that hydrolic power is delivered. blackcloak 17:34, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Also, let's not forget that although most residential customers think they are consuming 'electricity', they are, in fact, consuming electrical energy.

Remove merge tag
No discussion of the reason to merge on the talk page. No activity since then. Topics clearly different - "electricity" about the physical phenomenon, "electric power" about what we do with it. I'm removing the merge tag. --Wtshymanski 15:24, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Ferranti
I'm no expert in this subject but I'm surprised to find no reference to Sebastian de Ferranti in the early history here. For example his Deptford Power Station, an early large-scale AC plant, seems to be quite a significant milestone. Pterre (talk) 12:44, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Reworded history
Reworded history section (dif) because it described AC as "Tesla's alternating current system" and made claims such as Tesla designed the generators at Niagara Falls (that was actually George Forbes). It could also use a better referenced history on AC as to who did what in the US and Europe. There were many who developed AC in Europe and the US. Fountains of Bryn Mawr (talk) 04:16, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

Should "Electrical industry" link here?
Isn't the electrical industry more than just power generation and distribution? Doesn't it include stuff like appliance production, consumer electronics, electrical machines for industry etc.? -- 92.230.210.92 (talk) 15:18, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

Market reform: expanded explanation
Greetings Wikipedians! I added language which explains the industry restructuring which took place in the U.S. beginning in the 1990s. Cordially, BuzzWeiser196 (talk)
 * @Username:Wtshymanski - I condensed the text in response to your comment. Cordially, BuzzWeiser196 (talk) 11:40, 13 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks for taking the time to write something shorter. Storage is cheap, but reader life span is a precious thing and we ought not to waste it. --Wtshymanski (talk) 04:26, 14 June 2021 (UTC)

"Power company" listed at Redirects for discussion
A discussion is taking place to address the redirect Power company. The discussion will occur at Redirects for discussion/Log/2021 July 31 until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. Paul_012 (talk) 23:07, 31 July 2021 (UTC)