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
> I’m assuming the power plants produce enough electricity to meet a predicted average need plus a little extra margin
There are some good answers already, but they didn’t point out that this is where your error lies.
The power plants don’t produce any extra power just in case. Combined the total grid will produce exactly as much energy is needed.
Of course when the demand changes the plants will momentarily either produce too much or too little power, but they’ll adapt their output fast.
Also other people arleady mentioned inertia and a change in frequency if you either produce too much or too little power. I want to further add that this is kind of self balancing:
When you increase the net frequency this will make every direct driven motor on the grin spin faster as well (and therefore consume more power).
Also the voltage on the grid would rise slightly as well making many devices consume a bit more power as well.
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