eli5 How electricity production and distribution works?

Question

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! 🤷🏻‍♂️

In: 2

Answer 1

Each group of 8-10 houses is a branch in the electric tree. Your branch has a transformer that connects you with a feed line. This transformer also isolates your branch, so that if there is a short only one branch goes out.

Your transformer pulls power from the feed to satisfy the demand of your branch. If you are making more solar than you are using, if flows out through your meter into your neighbor’s house. Unless your whole branch makes more electricity than it uses, it’s unlikely that you have a two-way branch transformer. Mostly your excess solar is running the neighbor’s air conditioner, or something like that.

This benefits everybody because if there was more demand on the feed, then in your substation the regulator (a special kind of transformer that makes sure that the feed doesn’t brown-out) might run out of regulation and then everybody has a problem. By reducing the net load in your feed, less power is made in some distant power plant. This also means less is lost in transmission and distribution.