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
What you have in an electricity grid that you do not have in a water grid is transformers. A transformer will convert between different voltages. So you might for example have a 50kV line to your neighborhood which gets transformed down to 240V which is what goes to each house. If your solar panels produce more then 240V the power will go back into the line to the transformer and get transformed up to 50kV. A transformer is fully symmetrical and will convert the power up and down just the same.
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