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Why are Power Grids so Large?

Former Community Member
Former Community Member
Why are power systems so large and interconnected? For example, what technical obstacles prevents the US eastern interconnection from being 8 isolated islands? Why not separate them by ISO/RTO? Why does every power grid in the world strive to be as large as geography allows?


Better yet why not have scattered power plants about (with redundancies of course) feeding load radially? A lot simpler and a lot less to go wrong.

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    AJJewsbury:

    The same reasoning applies on much smaller scales too - e.g. a domestic 32A socket circuit can serve a much larger floor area than two 16A circuits - especially if you think you might have to supply up to three 10A loads that might be randomly located by users.




    I have always been a bit sceptical about the floor area argument. If a ring is good for 100 m2, then any small house needs only one socket circuit.


    Division into rooms is a better analogy. Take a 10-roomed house (5-up; 5-down). Option (1) one circuit per room (continental European practice). Each room's circuit will have to deal with that room's maximum demand. Option (2) one circuit per floor (British practice). It doesn't need to be 5 times bigger because of diversity.


    In the same way, interconnecting several power stations allows for lesser overall capacity because of diversity.

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    AJJewsbury:

    The same reasoning applies on much smaller scales too - e.g. a domestic 32A socket circuit can serve a much larger floor area than two 16A circuits - especially if you think you might have to supply up to three 10A loads that might be randomly located by users.




    I have always been a bit sceptical about the floor area argument. If a ring is good for 100 m2, then any small house needs only one socket circuit.


    Division into rooms is a better analogy. Take a 10-roomed house (5-up; 5-down). Option (1) one circuit per room (continental European practice). Each room's circuit will have to deal with that room's maximum demand. Option (2) one circuit per floor (British practice). It doesn't need to be 5 times bigger because of diversity.


    In the same way, interconnecting several power stations allows for lesser overall capacity because of diversity.

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