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Originally Posted by Undertoad
I was playing around with Google Earth, and traced the high-tension lines coming from Cromby. One set leads down to Barbadoes (sp?) Island near Norristown, where it links up with another plant of some sort - is this the recycling plant? - and then seems to head down the Schulykill towards the city. The other set goes across the county, links up with a much bigger set from Limerick, and winds up at a substation on North Wales Rd near Rt 73.
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Limerick sends what appears to be a smaller (230Kv) transmission line down to Cromby. Cromby then sends power to Philadelphia and to North Wales. The line to Philadelphia would pass through a switchyard in Barbadoes (I believe it was once a generator station and is now only a training facility). That line from Cromby also powers substations in the vicinity of The Cellar.
Limerick does not connect to North Wales. The backbone goes farther north to Whitpain and Soudertown where the backbone feeds NJ.
Another switchyard in that Cromby line would be Plymouth Meeting. The Mongomery County Recycling Center would be somewhere adjacent to this switchyard; located somewhere as the Blue Route intersects Ridge Pike and the PA Turnpike.
If power on this line is headed east, then Cromby would be the source. If power on this line is headed west, then Richmond, Eddystone, Schuykill, Delaware, and other fossil fuel only plants would be the electrical source. Montgomery County Recycling being closest to The Cellar.
Meanwhile, if those many natural gas turbines had been built (they would have been closer to The Cellar than Limerick), then still those generators would have been major providers to the backbone where electricity is more fungible. Florida Power and Light wanted generators that could sell power more easily to the entire grid.
BTW, the market leader in free market energy is, I believe, PJM. I suspect PJM sets the standards for responsible grid management and for free market energy sales. How big is PJM monitoring? They even monitor electricity in the Chicago region and in VA's Dominion Power. PJM is also the national grid that stopped the blackout from proceding all the way to FL. Stopped it from the west and then stopped it from the north. No wonder better utilities such as Dominion Power want to join PJM.
Meanwhile, the closest source of electricity for The Cellar are fossil fuel. The grid only provides 20% of electricity from nuclear. Now maybe those numbers will increase slightly when Excelon takes over Salem and Hope Creek nuclear reactors. I don't know how unreliable those nuclear plants are, but they are considered some of the most dangerous in the US. IOW I don't know how often those plants have been producing electricity. Reports on problems in those plants have been sketchy and vague. But at least one plant has extremely serious vibration problems (that may require a major refurbishment). Maybe those plants could push the Cellar's nuclear power consumption up a few percentage points?