Crazy But Able

Steven Den Beste has a couple of fascinating blog entries about the power grid and power generation issues. From the first entry:

But there’s a critical difference between electricity and any other product we distribute widely: there’s no practical way to store electrical energy in adequate quantities.

[…]

There are physical laws involved in electrical power systems which can’t be ignored. The most important is this: in any system involving electric power, the amount of power being generated will exactly match the amount of power being consumed at any given instant. It will always be exactly the same; it’s physically impossible for it to not be.

He then goes on to explain how the electric companies tightly regulate supply to conform to wide changes in demand. After reading the whole thing I’m amazed that the electric system even works here in the US, let alone works very well (which it does, considering all of the things that can go wrong). In the second post he responds to reader letters, talks a lot about alternative energy systems, and completely bashes wind power.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 25th, 2003 at 8:08 pm and is filed under economics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.