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
Most power plants produce electricity by rotating big coils. The rotation can come from wing turbines spinning or water or hot steam turning a turbine.
Those spinning coils transfer their energy into three power grid where “atoms wiggle”.
If someone uses energy it slows the wiggling down a bit. That slowing down acts like a break to the rotating turbine.
If suddenly power consumption plummets the turbine would turn faster and faster without the break and in the end break.
So you want to even out the power turning the turbine and the power slowing it down.
When there is too much power you can’t just turn off a whole power plant. That takes hours because it would break otherwise with all the energy in it.
You can easily stop photovoltaic by disconnecting it and easily turn off wind turbines by turning them out of the wind.
For the other plants though it’s simply easier to increase the break power/consumption.
If you can’t store or use the energy you sell them cheap or even pay others to use it. That only happens on a really short timeframe where there isn’t enough time to show down production
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