National Grid question

[Sparks336]

Electricity in the national grid can't be stored, so I'm led to believe. So what happens to generated electricity that's not immediately used? What happens if the grid is over-supplied?

I got thinking about this when I thought, "what if every house had solar panels?" And I couldn't answer myself.

Any enlightening answers would be appreciated, as it's been bugging me!

 

[Hysteresis]

All the power generating plant are of course linked together and as such are synchronised. If too much power is being generated then the grid frequency will marginally rise and result in station automatically cutting their generation and so bring the frequency back to within limits, Similarly if not enough power is being generated the frequency will marginally drop and result in automatic increase in generation. The grid is continuously monitored and generation capacity adjusted by manually switching stations of/on and accurate predictions are made of requirements for events such as televised programmes ending and anticipating the sudden increase of demanded power and bringing the swing stations on line ready to cope with the demand.
There are Base stations such as nuclear plant which are usually kept on full power at all times and allow the swing stations to take the swings in generation requirements.
The grid and it's control is a very complex operation and this simplified description does not even begin to explain it's enormous complexity, but at least it may help to appreciate it.

 

[AronSearle]

If every house had solar panels I would think it would give a fairly predictable supply.

In that panels in just one area will be affected by cloud cover, but spread over the country it won't matter, and you know what times the sun will shine at what strength.

With panels just dotted around on a few houses I guess it produces so little electricity it doesn't matter in terms of grid management.

 

[chapeau]

They have that pumped storage place in Wales. If somebody could invent a cheap/accessible way to store huge amounts of electricity that could be retrieved at the click of a switch then they would earn shed loads of cash.

They had a brilliant documentary a few months back on the National Grid. I kept it on my Sky + as it's really interesting and it also annoys the mrs.

 

[securespark]

Hang on, I'm just putting what my eldest calls my "nerd" hat on.....

OK, what was the documentary called, please?

 

[chapeau]

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=national+grid+documentary

first hit

Was over a year ago, how time flies

 

[JBR]

They have that pumped storage place in Wales. If somebody could invent a cheap/accessible way to store huge amounts of electricity that could be retrieved at the click of a switch then they would earn shed loads of cash.

They had a brilliant documentary a few months back on the National Grid. I kept it on my Sky + as it's really interesting and it also annoys the mrs.

Yes. Excellent programme. I recorded it back in 2010.

It doesn't annoy my OH, though. She just ignores it!