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 turning a crank that’s mixing dough, and you have to keep the speed constant or it’s ruined. When there’s not much dough in the bowl (demand) you can turn the crank easily, add more dough and you start to slow down, so you have to push harder. That’s how the grid works, yup they have to put more fuel in as demand increases, and they can tell demand by watching when the 60Hz (or 50Hz) the grid is meant to be at starts dropping.

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