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Unless you generate your own electricity, the power you use is generated somewhere else.
So how does the electricity actually get from a generator to the plug in your wall?
It happens in two stages: transmission and distribution.
When electricity leaves a power station like a hydro dam or gas plant, it travels in large
amounts over long distances through high-voltage wires.
That's what those towers in the transmission corridors are for.
Ontario has about 30,000 kilometers of transmission wires.
This electricity is too powerful to go directly into buildings, like your home, so it first
goes to your local electric utility company. It flows into a transformer station and gets
transformed from the high-voltage wires to lower voltage, safe enough to continue down
a series of smaller wires to reach homes and businesses.
This is called distribution. And this entire network from electricity generators
to electricity users is called "The Grid." In Ontario, electricity used to be sent one
way down a wire from only a few coal and hydro plants.
But now that electricity is generated from the wind, sun and other sources, we are transmitting
power from thousands of places all over the province and in every direction.
That means the "grid" has to be even smarter to manage the flow of electricity.
Transmission and distribution of electricity have to be instant—just like a light going
on with the flick of a switch. We can't yet store electricity the way we
can store other fuels. So electricity needs to be made AND moved along the Grid and available
at exactly the instant it is needed. And when you think that Ontario has over four
and a half million homes spread out over a million square kilometers, that's a lot of
wire and a lot of work to keep the lights on.
To learn more about how you can save energy, save money and how Ontario is building clean
energy, visit Ontario dot ca, slash empower me.
Tell us what you think: Follow us on Twitter #ONenergy @OntMinEnergy