Since, and unless electricity has properties I’m not aware of, it’s not possible for electric power plants to produce only and EXACTLY the amount of electricity being drawn at an given time, and not having enough electricity for everyone is a VERY bad thing, I’m assuming the power plants produce enough electricity to meet a predicted average need plus a little extra margin. So, if this understanding is correct, where does that little extra margin go? And what kind of margin are we talking about?
In: Engineering
The grid produces electricity at a frequency. 60Hz or 50Hz depending on where you live.
I’m in the US, so it’s 60Hz, Europe uses 50Hz, Japan has multiple grids, some use 50Hz and some use 60Hz.
If more energy is being produced than used, the grid speeds up slightly.
If more energy is being used than produced, the grid slows down.
Thunk about it like the load on the grid has all the power plants pushing against it. If the power plants are pushing too hard, it goes too fast. If the load is pushing harder than the power plants are pushing back, it goes too slow.
Every power plant individually needs to keep track of the frequency of the grid and tweak their output accordingly. There’s also a lot of planning going into which power plants are going to come online when to try and predict the amount of energy that will be needed. The owner of the grid can also offer to pay more money for electricity at certain times, usually when demand is high.
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