Power pooling is used to balance an electricity load over an electricity grid rather than a single utility. It’s a mechanism for the interchange of electricity between two or more utilities that provide or generate electricity.
Imagine a neighborhood with many houses, each having a small backyard pool. These represent individual power plants or generators. During times of high demand (hot summer days when everyone wants to swim), the small backyard pools may not have enough water to meet everyone's needs.
To solve this, the community builds a large central swimming pool that all the houses have access to. This central pool represents the power pool. Each house (an electricity generator) contributes some of its pool water to fill up the large community pool.
When an individual house needs more water than its backyard pool can provide, it can draw additional water from the large community pool to meet its demand. Conversely, if a house has excess water in its backyard pool, it can transfer that excess to the community pool for others to use.
The power pool operator is like the lifeguard managing the water levels and flows to/from the central pool to ensure it stays filled to meet everyone's needs at any given time. Just as houses draw water as needed, electric utilities can draw electricity from the power pool transmission lines to meet fluctuating demand in their area.
#powerpool
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