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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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    Curve ball, what if all generation was nuclear? Or at least 80% so?


    Nuclear generation is not good at responding to changing loads, and takes a long time to restart if it has to be stopped.  If generation was predominantly nuclear, a global grid would be a reasonable way, better than batteries, of maintaining a reasonably constant load.  Although Demand Side Management would probably still be necessary.

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    Curve ball, what if all generation was nuclear? Or at least 80% so?


    Nuclear generation is not good at responding to changing loads, and takes a long time to restart if it has to be stopped.  If generation was predominantly nuclear, a global grid would be a reasonable way, better than batteries, of maintaining a reasonably constant load.  Although Demand Side Management would probably still be necessary.

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