Timeline for What happens to excess energy fed into the power grid?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
7 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jan 4, 2023 at 17:25 | comment | added | greybeard | (A decade later, add numerous single digit MW windmills & such feeding MV.) | |
| May 3, 2018 at 10:08 | comment | added | Alex K | So what happens within the island if there is more generation with the island than is consumed? | |
| Jul 10, 2014 at 2:18 | comment | added | Anonymous Penguin | +1. One thing that's kinda not clear to me is they always say "amperage is always on demand." Since all the solar panels produce roughly the same voltage, it seems as you use the term "power" as "current drawn." Wouldn't the energy not be absorbed in the first place in the panels if there isn't a load? | |
| Jul 2, 2014 at 21:46 | comment | added | user36129 | Exactly. If you have 'just' a transformer (linear transformer = 'transformer' in laymen's terms), it will work either way. If you have something that acts like a transformer but isn't, it may not. Low voltage (20kV->230VAC in my country) transformers are just transformers, so they work both ways. However, the step above that to 400kV uses, you could say, a giant switching power supply like you use for a laptop. You can't put power in the low voltage end and expect it to come out the other way. This is often done to implement PFC, which is why I mentioned that. | |
| Jul 2, 2014 at 19:07 | comment | added | Dan Is Fiddling By Firelight | @cluelesscoder basic linear transformers don't have any components (like PFC) that care which way the current is flowing which would either prevent power from flowing 'backwards' to the rest of the grid or release magic smoke when current tried to flow through them in the wrong direction. | |
| Jul 2, 2014 at 16:36 | comment | added | cluelesscoder | Unfortunately, this goes a bit over my head. For example, you say "Rarely, but more often nowadays because of the low price of solar, the amount of power generated is more than the power consumed on the postal code level ... this is not that much of a problem ... The transformers used ... work just as well in one direction as they work in the other. They almost never have PFC or other flow direction dependent parameters so it's fine". What is happening here? You didn't break out the PFC (Power Factor Correction) acronym. How are these linear transformers dealing with the excess power? | |
| Jul 2, 2014 at 7:55 | history | answered | user36129 | CC BY-SA 3.0 |