how electricity is stored in power house

[ravi.2k17]

hi all,

do power houses store electricity when it is receive from the power plants (nuclear/thermal/solar/wind)? if yes how it is stored ? do they use batteries to store ?
or it is just a live transmission straight from the power plants to power houses and at last in our homes?


thanks...

 

[danadakk]

Grid energy storage - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Delivery to consumers - U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA)

How electricity is delivered to consumers, and an overview of the U.S. electricity system or grid, how the grid evolved, and the grid is structured and regulated.

www.eia.gov

Regards, Dana.

 

[Audioguru]

I know they store energy by damming water. They would get additional power if they store all the times I say "Damn wind"!

 

[Atkin]

You'll often end up with situations where there is too much power on the grid and it can actually have to be dissipated as waste. This is because the startup cost and time for a powerplant are a lot more than the running energy to put out the minimum amount of energy. This can lead to weird situations like in Alberta where the cost of electricity at certain times can actually dip to $0 as they want people to consume in order to prevent issues with the grid as a whole. It would actually dip to negative cost if they didn't have a legal floor price. This occurs on sunny days during times when the sun is shining, it's windy, but a lot of people aren't using power.

I'm not sure what you're referring to as powerhouses, if you're referring to substations, they simply serve the purpose to transform the voltage from an extremely high voltage (75kV - 1MV typical) to a relatively high voltage (7kV - 35kV typical) for transmission over medium distances from the substation to houses and businesses. Some grids will include battery backup segments; however, these aren't common as they are quite inefficient requiring a conversion from AC to DC for storage, and back.

If you have a more specific question I'll try and be more helpful, I used to design distribution power lines so I should have a general idea though some areas may do things slightly different than where I worked.

 

[c_mitra]

Power houses do not store electricity; they simple distribute it. However, if electricity is produced in excess (energy produced is more than the energy consumed) then it may be stored in someway: water pumping is a popular method. Excess electricity is used to pump water uphill and the same water can be used to produce electricity when the demand is high. They are usually not called power houses (I may be wrong and I have not checked). They are more like a generating stations but can also run as a pump (reverse generator is a motor and the same turbine running in reverse is a pump).

So, I say that the question is badly asked. Ask specific and well formed unambiguous questions. You will naturally get better results.

 

[betwixt]

They are called "pumped storage" generators - using power at low demand times to elevate water to a higher location then releasing it to generate electricity when needed at peak demand times.

There is one close to my home: https://www.electricmountain.co.uk/Dinorwig-Power-Station

Brian.

 

[finlay31]

I think this will help you out. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_energy_storage