eli5: what happens to the extra power when a portion of an electrical grid trips offline?

Question

For example: if a neighbourhood loses power, what happens to the power that the neighbourhood was consuming immediately beforehand?

Is there a sudden excess of power in other places near that neighbourhood?

In: Technology

Answer 1

If the load drops, what happens is that power generation stations will see the frequency of their output power start to increase. In theory, this should then trigger their controls to reduce their output to try to keep it at 60 Hz (for the USA). Likewise if the load increases, the frequency will decrease.