Let’s say in an isolated area there are fifty homes and a power station capable of producing 1500kW per day. Each home consumes 30kW per day on average.
Now explain the following two situations to me like I’m 22.
1. A new home has joined the party. Will the power station be able to supply power to the new house or does it need to be extended its capability? Or an existing home decided to purchase a refrigerator, graphic card or whatever and increased their demand. How will the increased demand be fulfilled?
2. Twenty homes went on a vacation. So, 900kW per day is enough to full fill thirty homes’ needs. But the power station will continue to produce 15000kw as usual. Where will the remaining 600kw go?
I’ve given an analogy of fifty homes with 1500kW but compare the situation with a country. Not every house consumes the same amount of electricity every day. How do the government produce and distribute electricity in an efficient manner? Does electricity get wasted? Where does the extra electricity go? It is obvious that there is no big battery to store em! 🤷🏻♂️
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To put it very simply, if you switch on an electric fire, the grid needs more power, and a man in the coal-fired power station shovels on more coal to create that power. Same in a hydropower site(just let more water through), gas power etc. Nuclear power has a minimum “baseload” that needs to run 24/7. And solar and wind are the hardest to regulate – they just add as much as they can and the other, more controllable sources work round what they’ve produced, to keep the voltage (actually frequency) constant. It’s very expensive to store electricity, so that’s rare.
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