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?
In: Technology
Short answer is that over a grid with millions of users, operating at millions of watts of power, individual actions generally have limited impact. Basically, your 20 watt light being switched off is someone else’s 20 watt light being switched on.
They can stabilise the system based on wider trends (for example, knowing that power demands for air conditioning will rise with the temperature, or every eastenders viewer in the uk putting their kettle on for tea after the credits roll), and schedule power generation based on that.
Theirs some “slack” in the system because over or under generation would cause the whole grid to over or underclock (ie, not run at 50 hz (or whatever the local standard is), but 50.006 or 49.975 or whatever), and so they can use that grid frequency as a speedometer to monitor demand and control plant output.
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