Some countries produce too much electricity at a certain period of the year, and have to pay another country to get rid of their extra own unconsumed electricity. Why can’t a power plant produce more electricity than consumed, what’s the physical obstacle to do so?
Also, what will the receiving country do if this surplus of electricity is again not consumed entirely?
In: 60
Power has to go *somewhere*. It can’t just dissipate into nothingness. Think of it like a gravel factory that constantly churns out 1 ton of gravel per minute, which you cannot turn off – if you produce more gravel than you need, you can’t just vapourise the extra that you don’t need – you have to put it somewhere.
Electricity has the downside that it’s not matter, like gravel, so it can’t just be dumped on the ground. It’s energy, and energy is far more difficult to store.
If you have too much energy, your options are:
* Store it, which requires batteries of sufficient size to store however much power, as well as various bits of transformer infrastructure to make sure you don’t blow anything up on the way. Most power stations do have some form of battery, but this is mostly for managing ebbs and flows in demand – they don’t hold a great deal, and aren’t intended to hold much long-term. Batteries that hold power on a ‘national grid’ level are extremely expensive.
* Use it for something. The obvious issue with this option is that if you have something to use it on, it’s not excess energy.
* Sell it. There are a precious few handful of countries that produce far more energy than they need. Iceland is the best example – they’ve floated the idea of running an enormous cable to the UK to allow them to sell their excess power to Europe
* Pay someone to take it from you. Basically inverted-selling. Then it becomes someone else’s’ problem.
Countries that are buying power from other nations usually have more flexible/variable power generation, or are trying to wean themselves off fossil fuels.
Latest Answers