How does the electrical grid cope with small fluctuations like flipping a light switch?

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The operation of an electrical grid is a balancing act – you have to produce *exactly* the same amount of energy as is needed, otherwise bad things happen. I don’t understand how does this rule apply on anything other than the largest scale of things.

I understand that *in general* you can predict a higher load on the grid during Monday evening when everyone is at home, and plan your energy production accordingly. But a power station can’t predict smaller load fluctuations like if I decide to turn on or off my TV at this very moment.

So, how does the electrical grid cope with unpredictable load that differs from the planned & expected one?

In: Engineering

10 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Teams of people at power providers assess, generally every hour and every day, the load being requested by consumers and supply electricity immediately to maintain the requested consumption.

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