Tuesday, June 4, 2013

The grid is a huge AC battery.

The electric power grid acts like a large storage device. If there are enough users, the load tends to average out. Am I right about that? Anyway, I have photovoltaic panels on my roof, connected to a big inverter which is connected to the grid. It is called a grid-tie system. The power company changed out my meter when the system was installed. This meter reads NET usage. So, when the sun shines but I am not using all the power my panels are producing the power is pushed out onto the grid where someone else will use it, or maybe the power company's generator is dialed down a bit. The beautiful part for me is that the meter runs backwards in that case. The power company is buying my solar panel produced power at full retail. Then I buy some or all of it back at the same price when the sun isn't shining here. From my point of view, the grid is acting like a huge 100% efficient battery. You probably already know all about this stuff, but I think it is cool.