eli5: how do electric companies deal with different demands of electric power?

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As far as I know the electric power is produced „fresh“ and transported everywhere via wires. If I turn on a light in my house the demand goes slightly up. Does the power plant then automatically produce more electric power? Or are there huge batteries somewhere that deal with the different demands?

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Anonymous 0 Comments

Imagine you’re catering for 100 people. You go to serve dinner and, actually, 101 people turn up. It’s fine, as everyone will just get 1% less food, you can make it stretch. Then, the next day, you make enough for 101 people.

That’s the broad idea. You turning on a lightbulb is insignificant for the grid as a whole so
it can cope by just sharing it all out as usual. They monitor everyone’s energy usage and if the demand on the grid increases (i.e more people turn up to eat) they produce more power.

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