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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.

Parents
  • I heard that the US authorities thought that 110 volts was safest it being a non lethal voltage or so they thought in the 1920s same as the UK authorities thought that anything over 250 was lethal. As to why they chose 60 cycles over 50 I have no clue
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  • I heard that the US authorities thought that 110 volts was safest it being a non lethal voltage or so they thought in the 1920s same as the UK authorities thought that anything over 250 was lethal. As to why they chose 60 cycles over 50 I have no clue
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