Matching of Power Station Output To Load
To keep a stable voltage and frequency, the power generated at any instant has to be kept close to the load imposed. To do this, National Grid continuously forecasts load ahead on various timescales, 7 years, annually by season (winter outlook and summer outlook), daily, hourly, and shorter time frames.
For the rolling 24 hours ahead, it estimates what the load is then likely to be based mainly what the load is at the moment of forecast, but adjusted for likely weather changes, day of the week and other special events. it then schedules the required power stations, plus the appropriate reserve. As time progresses, the forecast is constantly updated until real time is approached, when the balancing is largely automatic using spinning reserve.
Read more about this topic: Control Of The National Grid
Famous quotes containing the words power, station, output and/or load:
“Power, I said. Power to walk into the gold vaults of the nations, into the secrets of kings, into the holy of holies. Power to make multitudes run squealing in terror at the touch of my little invisible finger. Even the moon’s frightened of me. Frightened to death. The whole world’s frightened to death.”
—R.C. Sherriff (1896–1975)
“[T]here is no situation so deplorable ... as that of a gentlewoman in real poverty.... Birth, family, and education become misfortunes when we cannot attain some means of supporting ourselves in the station they throw us into. Our friends and former acquaintances look on it as a disgrace to own us.... If we were to attempt getting our living by any trade, people in that station would think we were endeavoring to take their bread out of their mouths.”
—Sarah Fielding (1710–1768)
“Lizzie Borden took an axe
And gave her mother forty whacks;
When she saw what she had done,
She gave her father forty-one.”
—Anonymous. Late 19th century ballad.
The quatrain refers to the famous case of Lizzie Borden, tried for the murder of her father and stepmother on Aug. 4, 1892, in Fall River, Massachusetts. Though she was found innocent, there were many who contested the verdict, occasioning a prodigious output of articles and books, including, most recently, Frank Spiering’s Lizzie (1985)
“Tobacco and opium have broad backs, and will cheerfully carry the load of armies, if you choose to make them pay high for such joy as they give and such harm as they do.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)