Hello everyone,
I’m studying electricity in school, but I still don’t have a firm grasp on electrical power systems and was hoping for some help. I have four main questions. Anyone working in power systems, please share your knowledge!
1. How do each of the various generation schemes (coal / steam turbine, wind farm, nuclear plants, etc) output power at exactly 60Hz? I understand the basics of how a electrical generator works, but I don’t understand how they stabilized the output frequency to exactly 60Hz.
2. How do multiple generation points in the system synchronize their outputs to each other? How do all the different power plants and such dump power onto the grid together at the same phase?
3. I guess I don’t understand the grid itself overly well. Could anyone explain the concept of the power grid? (for example, is it like multiple net contributors of power (power plants, etc) each acting similiar to batteries in parallel?
4. What happens to excess (unused) power? If a particular system has three 250MW power plants, but the neighborhoods they power only use up 600MW, what happens to the extra unused 150MW? I’ve heard that people monitor the power input/output and “adjust” the power output from the plants to match the consumers’ usage. Is this true, and if so, how is this done? (shutting off generators, running them more slowly, etc). Also, if this is the case, what is done for power generation sources that cannot be human controlled (say, a wind farm; when the wind blows, it turns)?
Thanks in advance.