🚀 go-pugleaf

Joe St. Lucas wrote:
...
> 
> Utilities are usually granted a monopoly in an area, so they better
> have the capacity, except on those three-sigma hot/cold days.
> I can always go to another gas station that has gas, IF I want to
> pay a higher price.  I can't get another utility company to pump
> electricity down my wires if the one doesn't perform.
> =====
You don't have to; it happens anyway.
Local electric utilities are tied together in a nation-wide network,
so the possibility that any local utility will "run out" of electricity
is somewhere between slim & none. When a utility starts to get near it's
capacity, it starts pulling in power from the net, under pre-existing
contracts.
Also, any local utility's generating capability is usually under the
total power handling capanbility of that utilities delivery network.
IOW, the real limiting factor for how much power a utility can deliver 
is not tied to it's generating capacity, but the capacity of it's
delivery system; the switching centers are the critical link, here, 
and will determine the point at which a utility will start to restrict
power ("brown-outs"). Usually, this is done by a pre-arrainged cutback
of use by major power users (businesses, usually). Only in older systems
do brown-outs hit the homeowners any more (big cities tend to fit this
catagory more than anywhere else).
Most actual outages are not from a lack of capacity, but from a mechanical 
failure in the system.

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