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Originally Posted by Emanon
I dont understand the whole power grid thing. Can someone explain in laymens terms how a rolling "brown" or "black" out helps?
Is power stored in pseudo capacitors and are the reserves really low enough to only be able to "light" a few sections at a time?
WTF?
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No, actually it's the opposite ... since power is NOT stored, every little dollop of electricity that comes off the grid each and every second had to come from somewhere right that instant (note to physics majors: he asked for a layman's explanation and I'm trying to simplify).
If you imagine that the wire to your house is just ganged up with all the other wires in your city and runs right back to a generator, you wouldn't be far off from how it works (except there are multiple generators and there are transformers and all sorts of complicated things). But basically, every electron that flies into your house was energized by a generator somewhere.
If people are demanding more power than the generators currently on line can generate, That Would Be Bad (ref: Ghostbusters). One way or another the system will acheive balance -- either chaotically/catastrophically, or else by the engineers deciding to cut off parts of the grid to reduce the load.