We never seem to wonder how the electricity that we use on a daily basis makes it from power plants to our homes. Everything around us, from the television you watch to the light switch you flip on is powered by electricity. If you actually think about it electricity is a pretty remarkable feature. This feature travels in a safe way, in which we have become accustomed to today. The method or manner in which electricity travels from the power plant to the consumer’s home is called electric grids.
In early years, electric grids was created to generate, transmit, and distribute power. Generating power was the first step in delivering electricity, with the transmission of electricity from power stations to power companies being the second step. The final step was the distribution of power which delivered the power to consumers. Electric grids, also called “networks”, was later labeled as the network infrastructure for electric companies.
The way we receive our electricity has not changed much in the last hundred years. Coal nuclear hydropower plants sends electricity through transmission lines, to substations and on to transformers, then onto to finer and finer wires to smaller voltages until it has reached devices like laptops, Iphones, and other new age devices that are plugged in to the wall. It’s just in time for manufacturing to take extreme. Since electricity travels closely to the speed of light every kilowatt must be used the moment it is created. For utility companies, this means balancing a heavy load, trying to match the supply of electricity perfectly with demand. When demand out paces supply the demand goes dark, this is where the term blackout cam about. This blackout causes the backup power plants to pump electricity in the system at a moment’s notice. Keeping
power plants like these running can become very expensive and contributes to a lot of wasteful fuel and natural gas.
Since the 1980s the power grid has been getting smarter....