Using solar energy, for example, I am told that excess energy can be sold back to the grid. How does this exactly work? Maybe I am a bit confused due to thinking about the analogy of water pressure / flow rate in a pipe network being similar to voltage / current in an electrical network. If your home generated excess energy, how would it overcome the high voltage / current of the grid?
In: Engineering
Imagine the power grid is a giant wheel spinning at a constant speed. You can connect smaller gears (your appliances) to this wheel and that will cause power to be transferred from the wheel to your appliance. By doing this, the wheel will slow down ever so slightly.
The power company will constantly monitor the speed of this wheel and if it slows down, then they need to add generators to speed up the wheel. The same thing happens if the wheel is spinning too fast. They’ll turn off generators.
Your solar panels are just motors that turn in the same direction as the giant wheel, so it makes it spin faster.
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