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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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    mapj1:

    Generally you leave the fuel in the reactor, and raise or lower control rods in between the fuel to alter the rate of reaction, and therefore the vigour of steam production.

    It is the economics of keeping the plant running without an income from sales that makes it worth running land based reactors at full power.

    It is quite possible, but very wasteful to keep a reactor in the tickover state with the fuel in almost indefinitely.
    The MOD has a large no of redundant submarines in that state.




    Blimey, the R boats take me back to my earliest days in RN at Rosyth in 1990!


    I take the point about the economics, but if EdF can do it, why not we?

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    mapj1:

    Generally you leave the fuel in the reactor, and raise or lower control rods in between the fuel to alter the rate of reaction, and therefore the vigour of steam production.

    It is the economics of keeping the plant running without an income from sales that makes it worth running land based reactors at full power.

    It is quite possible, but very wasteful to keep a reactor in the tickover state with the fuel in almost indefinitely.
    The MOD has a large no of redundant submarines in that state.




    Blimey, the R boats take me back to my earliest days in RN at Rosyth in 1990!


    I take the point about the economics, but if EdF can do it, why not we?

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