How do power plants “know” the exact amount of energy that is in demand at a current moment by the millions of consumers within its distribution network since they must produce near this amount of energy (either too much or too little energy being pumped into the grid in comparison to the energy demand has negative consequences, if I understand correctly?)
Is there some sort of signaling system that can tell how much power is being drawn at a exact moment or will be drawn one second/minute into the future?
What happens if too much energy is produced at a current moment compared to the demand?
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The short version is that you can tell if your network is over/under supplied by the frequency of the power in the network. If your network is oversupplied, the frequency increases as your generators have an easier load and begin to speed up. If your network is undersupplied, your frequency decreases as the load begins to tax your generators.
It gets more complicated as different components are added to the network, but at least from the power plant’s perspective, they can tell if they need to increase or decrease capacity simply by monitoring how hard their generation equipment is working.
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