How do power plants actually make power and distribute it?
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Making power is (compared to distributing it) pretty straightforward. Essentially, if you rotate a magnet around a wire, you can induce a current (i.e., electricity) in that wire. So all we need to do is find some energy to rotate a magnet. This comes from all sorts of places. Wind turbines use wind to do it. Fossil fuel based plants burn their fuel to heat water into steam which spins turbines. Hydroelectric dams use falling water to spin turbines. Nuclear power uses the heat of nuclear reactions to boil water to spin turbines. Solar is just about the only source of power we use that doesn’t use this trick. Solar, instead, converts the energy from sunlight directly into electric power using, basically, fancy chemistry involving silicon.
So ok, now you’ve got current flowing through wires. What you need next is a giant, interconnected network of wires linking a bunch of different power generation and consumption sites together. This network, which we call the power grid, is what distributes power. Since there is negligible capability to store power in the grid, basically all the electricity used has to be generated on the spot. This means that, every second of every day, power plant operators are coordinating forecasts of energy demand and managing how much power they generate to match it. Power sometimes needs be rerouted on the spot due to downed lines, etc. It’s a big, complicated balancing act that it’s kind of amazing we get right most of the time.
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