Saving electricity with CFL, LED

[Anomalocaris]

Hello all,
I am posting here because I want some juicy brains to answer.

I am wondering, is it really possible to save on electricity if we all use less?


Let’s say I am in Canada, and let’s say all of the electricity is generated via hydro power or solar power. Let’s say all the power companies is own by the canadian government.
If all of the population uses 50% less power, would our electric bill come down or would the power companies adjust the price of the electricity so that our bill stays the same?

So, if we all start using CFL or LED, will our bills be reduced or would the power company make an adjustment and increase the price of electricity?

Where does the saving in $$$ come from? Are they going to shut down a power plant or do they all remain open?

That depends on how the retail power rates are set.    In a regulated monopoly system investor owned electric utilities must share their books with a public regulating agency, typically some sort of public utility commission.   In the US, regulated utilities are not permitted to make a single dime of the power they supply to their rate payers.   However much it cost them to generate or procure the power they supply to their rate base customers,   that’s exactly how much they can recover through the rates they charge the end user.

So if the total cost of generating power went down 30% because every one is using less power, the electric cost component of your electric bill will go down exactly 30%.

However, your total electric bill not go down by exactly 30%, because with typical utility, the actual cost of generating or procuring the power to deliver to the customer constitute less than half of electric bill.   The rest of consist of cost recovery on capital investment, transmission and distribution cost, and corporate overhead.

often, the only place a regulated utilities is allowed to make a profit rather than simply pass true cost to the end user is in capital investment on plant and equipment, and in transmission and distribution infrastructure.   But the permissible rate of profit is also regulated.    So a utility can’t just double the profit margin on its capital investment to make up for reduced electric demand.

Reducing total power demand will not reduce the cost recovery on existing utility infrastructure, unless the utility operate under some special rules applicable to some jurisdictions.   However, it will reduce need for future infrastructure investment.  So it will reduce long term capital investment recovery component if your utility bill.

Government owned utilities operate under somewhat different rules that are often specific to each large government owned utility, but the concept id usually similar.