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
There is no need to dump energy. They just turn the power plant down. Same as if you are heating your house and it’s too hot, you just turn the heater down.
This all happens automatically anyway, it’s normally a legal requirement when connecting a power plant to the grid that it can be turned down if needed. Some power plants are kept on automatic control for this reason.
Things however are a bit more complicated than just that. Some plants have big heavy machinery that doesn’t like being disturbed and constantly adjusting it causes wear. Some plants have minimum recommended power, and if you need to turn them down too much, you are better switching them off, because running them at idle causes a lot of wear and tear which needs expensive repair. Some plants have expensive fuel and are quite happy to turn down, in return for a small admin fee. Others have free fuel so don’t want to turn down and get less money from sale of electricity.
You can’t always turn power plants off completely, because they may still be needed in case of emergency. For example if a power line gets struck by lightning, and disconnects a huge wind farm, another power plant has to be able to take the strain within 30 seconds or you will get cascading blackouts. This means that if a gas power plant has to be kept running and warmed up for emergency standby while running at idle, someone has to pay to have the plant burning gas and wearing out their turbines while not actually using it for any power. If that gas power station was turned off, then it might take 30-60 minutes to start up and respond – that is much too slow.
Latest Answers