How Electricity Generation Really Works
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- Опубликовано: 31 май 2024
- Continuing the series on the power grid by diving deeper into the engineering of large-scale electricity generation.
The importance of electricity in our modern world can hardly be overstated. What was a luxury a hundred years ago is now a critical component to the safety, prosperity, and well-being of nearly everyone. Generation is the first step electricity takes on its journey through the power grid, the gigantic machine that delivers energy to millions of people day in and day out. So how does it work?
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-Website: practical.engineering
Writing/Editing/Production: Grady Hillhouse
This video is sponsored by Hello Fresh.
There’s a lot more to the discussion here, so let me know into which topics you’d like to go deeper in future videos. Thanks for watching!
Love the channel !! Maybe do one on where the electricity is induced from, or at least theories on it.
Green Concrete !
Could you make a video on aparent power, reactive... that kind of stuff? I seen it explained many times but I still dont get it. I say it because your video has been super informative and easy to understand even though I already knew most of it, I didnt know all this info could be so compressed and still being easy to digest, good job
Great job! Can you explore electric vehicles becoming more common and the impact that will have on the grid?
Going into proper depth on the pro/anti nuclear arguments, and which ones have actual merit, would be good. For instance, is nuclear waste actually a problem in the near future, or is it just an academic objection that doesn't really matter?
As an electrical engineer, you literally explained what took my professors weeks (and they really didn’t) in 10 minutes, you’re amazing
You’re not an electrical engineer. You are a student
@@cnoogs344 they're an electrical engineer in the making, or since his comment is a year old they may well be an electrical engineer by now
@@lewischrismichealdomonical2216 at the time he said the comment, he was not an electrical engineer, he was a student studying to become an electrical engineer. Plus after you graduate, US states still do not recognize engineer grads as professional engineers. They must first pas the FE exam, at which point they'll be called an engineer-in-training), then they must pass the PE exam, and finally after 4 years of work experience as an electrical engineer, the state will recognize you as a professional electrical engineer. So, I maintain that the OC was not an EE at the time of writing his comment and thus mischaracterized him/herself
Guys...cmon. He’s an electrical engineer. He was an electrical engineer at the time of the comment. And he may have been an electrical engineer for quite some time now. While studying to become an electrical engineer he had professors that gave convoluted lessons. This isn’t rocket science.
@@cnoogs344 LOL i'm already retired from electrical engineering... you guys crack me up. Being an EE isn't some godlike thing.
Despite my reservations about nuclear, I find it vexing that everyone seems to forget that nuclear doesn't emit co2.
@@psiwog actually co2 is more dangerous than radioactive waste.
@@psiwog bruh we literally kill more people daily due to respiratory issues from coal burning than every nuclear failure combined. Nuclear waste is contained. We breathe the waste from coal plants daily.
You are right! But did you know that germany(top tier country when it comes to engineering) is STILL looking for the "right" way of storing the radiating rubbish savely... and by the way you have to look for it #securitythreat (for the next 1000+ Years!!!) If you take this in consideration NP is fucking expensive. For my opinion the next step is Hydrogen. Than Nuclear Fusion...
Dont forget thorium!
@@hennsbreit I thought Germany had closed all its nuclear power plants in favour of burning brown coal, after the Fukushima Daiichi disaster. So the urgency for that has probably dropped a bit.
Also, hydrogen isn't a source of energy, it can be used as a fuel inside of cars, but we don't have abundant supplies of it sitting around the Earth, as a matter of fact, when released it simply flies off into space when released outside, like helium. Instead we produce hydrogen, either through electrolysis of water, which isn't very efficient (and the electricity often being generated by the burning of fossil fuels), or from steam methane reforming, which releases carbon dioxide.
Nuclear fusion would be the holy grail of energy generation, but it's still a way off of becoming a power source (it still costs more energy to perform than it yields), let alone being cost competitive. I guess it's still 30 years away, as it has always been...
I hate the term renewable energy as it excludes nuclear energy from the start. Using conventional fuel sources nuclear can power us for centuries and with unconventional fuels like thorium or plutonium in fast spectrum reactors can powers us for thousands of years, and yet the fact that this nuclear fuel is not renewed by the big nuclear fuel in the sky somehow makes it undesirable,
Nuclear power isn't renewable
Renewable energy is theoretically infinite or resources are naturally conducting e.g ferroelectric, electrochemical, electromagnetic, photovoltaic and momentum based kinetic energy
@@haruhisuzumiya6650 yes but how is something like solar infinite when the panels need replacing after a decade?
The Olympic Dam mine (copper, gold, iron and uranium) has enough uranium to supply all the current 380 or so nuclear power stations for 400 years. Other mines and yet to be mined deposits around the world would keep nuclear power going for at least as long again. Decommissioned nuclear weapons have been used to supply fuel (until recently) under the "megatons for megawatts" USA-USSR agreement. This potential over-supply of uranium is why the price is so low at present.
I hate the term "fossil fuel" since oil does not come from fossilized anything.
@@tomr6955 Because the fuel is (for all intents and purposes) infinite. No one claimed the device itself is eternal or some perpetual motion machine - it's simply you can't run out of the fuel, whereas nuclear fuel can. That said, the main arguement against nuclear isn't fuel scarcity. The main issue is the fuel life-cycle. Managing the waste is the number one problem IMHO, a much bigger issue than nuclear safety, as it's an unavoidable issue that affects every single nuclear plant, and we have no real solution.
Thank you for these videos. I've always wondered how they store all the electricity and I'm really taken aback by the answer, "they don't". It really puts a lot of the issues with zero emissions electricity into perspective, and really makes me have respect for the people who make this infrastructure work so seamlessly.
Right!? Modernizing our energy infrastructure is one of if not the most important priorities for the United States. We have depended upon fossil fuels for too long. Politics are to blame for the majority of our energy issues.. but that’s another story. I was also surprised to learn that the electric energy isn’t stored, like at all.
It’s not just that “They don’t”. Our current battery technology is nowhere NEAR the point where we could effectively store ANY meaningful amount of electricity. We CAN’T. Economically, logistically and responsibly. For perspective, in order to supply a city with enough power for more than a day or so, it would require batter banks consisting of highly toxic and volatile materials that would occupy a significant portion of that city. Literally, miles and miles of nothing but Tesla batteries (which are themselves nothing but 7,104 #18650 flashlight batteries in series) stacked on top of each other in order to supply the rest of the city. We just don’t know how to STORE electricity effectively at scale. Literally, our best current attempts are to put a bunch of flashlight batteries together in series. We just physically cannot do it yet, our tech isn’t advanced enough.
@@spartan7404 Well, one direction that could be expanded is lead-acid, or closed lead-acid (which was innovation from standard lead-acid type)
Especially for electric cars, lead acid could be better than tesla battery by long mile ...only that you couldnt really sell recharging fee then since cars engine would need maintain electric load (just like its done with gasoline type)
My dad was talking to a engineer at a hydroelectric plant. He was told the hydroelectric plant is the easiest/efficient place to adjust grid following because of the static reserve of water. Others loose efficiency on warm up and cool down.
Yep. Grid operators love them. The only thing better is battery storage, which probably wasn't a thing when that discussion took place.
The worst for adjusting grid following is windmills
Sorry I think I crossed grid following for load following
@@elischultes6587 can you provide a reference for that because that's exactly opposite to what network operators tell me.
@@gasdive Wind turbines' output depends on the cube of wind speed, so the fluctuations can be very high, causing many problems for operators. Type 3 and 4 wind turbines (99 % of the turbines that are installed lately) are connected to the grid via a power converter, meaning they don't provide inertia. In Ireland, they are limiting wind turbines' instantaneous penetration because of stability issues.
"We can't hold it in our hand" Technically we can... it's letting go that's the problem.
hahaaha
throw it into the fire... let it go
@nlpeaden ive been shocked 3 times and always let go easly , but my last adn 4th time i simply couldnt let it go i tried as much as i could and i just couldnt but all of a suden im "free" with my fingers bleeding ':)
No, you can't. It's the conductor you're holding.
You can't let go of DC.
I found these videos extremely interesting while I was in high school. Now that I'm in college for engineering, it makes these videos even more interesting than they were before! Great work again!
On the topic of sustainability and since many countries are experiencing water crisis, can you do one on desalination and/or reverse osmosis?
And garbage, waste management, waste to energy, capturing carbon in the chimney. So fascinating
Rohan Thatte most countries suffering from a water crisis is because of incompetence and corrupt governments not because of lack of technology. Example one South Africa.
Just follow first world countries in garbage management. Ship the garbage to countries shittier than yours.
@@UltimateAlgorithm One man's garbage is another man's treasure. ;)
@@bbaker4033 I don't think you understand what's happening in Indonesia and how it's fueling the garbage patches in the ocean.. There are three now, each about the size of Texas. Maybe larger.
@@michaelnewman6936 Yeah, Texas is a bit of a garbage patch, isn't it?
It is rare to see a video that explains so many technical concepts in such a simple way without heavy bias or opinion mixed in. I'm super impressed, Grady!
Electrical engineer here, and this topic has been my job for about 15 years now.
Everything you said is brilliantly illustrated and on point.
Kudos to you !
I'd happily replace "renewable" at the end by "durable", but that's a subject for another day :)
Bravo again !
I went 'Why?' for a moment, and then remembered that Thermodynamics makes concessions for nobody. Not even the sun....
I never realized how little sense the word "renewable" makes until I saw this comment. I think "sustainable" makes a little more sense than "durable", but you're right: "renewable" is a silly word to use. I suppose you might be referring to the fact that it takes materials to build solar panels and wind turbines and that 100% efficient recycling is impossible, so the systems do consume resources to some degree just at a much much lower rate than fossil fuel-based power. Is that what you mean?
Also, can you comment on the feasibility of using a high-voltage DC "super-grid" to address the intermittency of wind and solar power? I've heard that a European super grid could allow Europe to run completely on sustainable sources of energy because it would span something like 13 timezones. I don't know how the cost of building a "super-grid" compares to that of building energy storage facilities. How do you see our transition to sustainable energy playing out ‡?
‡ Not necessarily how it *ought to* play out. I know a lot of rational people think that we should build thousands of nuclear power plants because the technical and economical factors make sense. I'm not against nuclear, but I question how feasible it is to overcome the social/political challenges in a timely manner because nuclear is inherently scary and very hard to educate people about. People know that radiation is something that they see or perceive in any way, yet it can cause horrific diseases like cancer that kill you slowly and painfully. It's kind-of a nightmare death-stalker. It's very difficult to explain to people why they shouldn't be afraid of such a thing in their back yard. What's worse is that nuclear proponents have a history of glossing over major problems leaving the industry with a huge trust problem.
You can see that playing out with the hype over Thorium. There are hundreds of videos online where people explain all the miraculous benefits of Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors (LFTRs) without ever mentioning any technical challenges (of which there are many) and sometimes out-right lying about the tech like saying that it doesn't produce nuclear waste (when in-fact it would produce far more waste than LWRs, just not as much *spent fuel waste*). When asked why LFTR has been on the drawing board for decades yet never implemented, proponents start coming up with conspiracy theories. It couldn't possibly be the extremely complex chemistry involved! It couldn't possibly be that combining the fuel with the coolant and flowing it through the entire reactor instead of keeping it in a centralized location (like LWRs) means that the entire reactor gets irradiated to the point that only robots can operate around the reactor! No. It's all a conspiracy!
And I'd make it "durable zero emissions". We should be working to eliminate CO2 emissions rather than installing wind and solar and hoping emissions will go down. Germany has been installing wind and solar, and their emissions haven't gone down. France, Sweden and Ontario installed nuclear energy and their emissions went down.
nothing is renewable. given sufficient time, eventually all energy will dissipate.
(or actually maybe not and it's one of those "the closest decimal to 0" situations. idk, i'm not a professional physicist)
@@fomalhaut_the_great Energy cannot be created nor destroyed but can only change from one form to another.
I've been watching this series on the power grid and in this past week parts of Western Australia have been SMASHED by brutal storms. Kalgoorlie was so badly hammed the news were talking about city being without power for weeks, (most power is back up with Generators) Transmission towers down, trees on lines, over all a real mess, the news has not explained the extent of the damage in Kal, only given highlights if you will. Because of this series I better understand the challenges facing Western Power and the herculean effort they have gone to get most of an outback city powered again and why they have had to bring in so many generators. Why they can’t just switch the power back on, thank you for educating me and others and giving us a better understanding of how complex the grid is.
At 7:07 you reference spinning reserve as a generator that can connect to the grid at a moments notice, that is actually a reserve shutdown unit. Spinning reserve is what generation capability is left available for use on a generator that is currently producing, i.e a generator capable of producing 155MW that is only currently producing 100MW would have a spinning reserve of 55MW.
Great video, perhaps explain why it is so difficult for power production to go back online once a major interruption occurs. For example the 2003 blackout, This is when that coordination between the grid operators is critical, also black-start capacity.
Carlos - there are basically two factors here. The first is that it sometimes takes time to restore the source of energy. If the interruption has lasted long enough that power plants have had to shut down, it can take hours to days to get them back on line. For example, before you can restart a boiler, you must first 'purge the boiler' to make sure that there are no residual combustible gasses left inside - otherwise, attempting to restart the boiler could lead to an explosion. This can take hours. Or, there is the fact that the steam that passes through turbines is at very high temperatures, so if the turbine is allowed to slow down to standstill, the hot turbine can actually sag between the bearings that support the ends of the shaft, and restarting it requires a lengthy process of raising the temperature while very slowing accelerating the speed such that any residual sag doesn't become dangerous deflection as the rotor starts to spin.
The other half of the problem is restoring the connections within the grid. If the outage resulted from some kind of failure, the damaged components must be located and either repaired or bypassed. The obvious worst case might be a hurricane or ice storm that produces widespread damage, and power can't be restored until that damage has been addressed. Because the work involved is done on a circuit by circuit basis, some consumers will see service restored very quickly - potentially within seconds to minutes, while others can take a very long time, depending on how much physical damage must be repaired.
In cities like New York, the grid often is designed around something called a 'network' - a network design produces extremely high reliability, but the process of restoring service after a network outage is very tedious and requires careful coordination of multiple operators spread across a wide area. So for example, consumers in New York have the highest reliability of any electrical consumers, but when service is restored, it tends to be restored to all consumers at the same time. But the process of restoring a network is tricky, it can take hours.
The real answer to this is complicated and lengthy, but Louie's answer is a good Cliff Notes version.
@@TomwithaDream Wowza. The explanation was good, but I definitely considered it complicated and lengthy. I'll leave the more in depth explanation alone.
Most generators need grid power to start. Those magnets in the generator are electro magnets. Black starts are rare. Could go into that.
Louie Powell l
I have to say, your effort of presenting ads at the end of the video is great! Feels natural and not forced, great work!
This is the only channel that I am fine with watching the ads.
Definitely an easy transition with the personal touch of him doing his own ad. 👍
He is effort!
@@davham27 Whet about jay foreman
And today's ad was super wholesome lol
Edit incorrect: It's a neat addendum that power plants require utterly MASSIVE banks of resistors (load) to get the generator up and running in sync 'at load' prior to switching over from startup to online. Just getting it up to voltage and matched frequency will cause a big problem when the real load hits the coils (as demonstrated with the brushless motor)...You need to spin it up while simulating the load it is expected to face on the grid, then match the grid, then cut over. It has to happen quickly because dumping megawatts (very plural) into a resistor is a good recipe to boil the dump bank!
Excellent video as always!
No, it's not like that. The voltage angle is synchronized too so the active power flow after the connection is zero (neglecting losses). It's the voltage angle difference that determines the active power flow in AC power systems. When it's synchronized you can increase mechanical input to get an active power output from the generator.
@Ed Harms Thank you for sharing, I stand corrected.
@@frollard
Where did you hear that some power plants have massive resistive dump-loads? I don't doubt that it could well be possible.
@@gregorymalchuk272 Rather unrelated but many elevators use resistive banks to sop up the energy when the elevator is decelerating or overhauling (generating electricity in its motor instead of consuming it). For some extra cost a "regenerative drive" will feed that power to the building/grid. Elevator would over-speed if it couldn't dump its generated electricity, shut down, entrapment, not good.
@ frollard, you are completely incorrect!!!! There is ZERO resistive load required at a power plant to go on line. You bring the generator up to 3600rpm(for a 2 pole generator), make sure your sync scope confirms 60hz synchronization and close the breaker... easy peasy. Additionally on a bulk electric grid, resistive load in general is light load. The heavy load on a grid is inductive load, which is why bulk electric system power plants can vary reactive power ( MVAR's). the bigger the generator the more leading and lagging MVAR capacity.
I think some of the next installments of the power grid episodes should include these:
* Grid-connected power storage (batteries, pumped storage hydroelectricity, less conventional systems like compressed gas tanks and flywheels)
* Net metering
* Load demand curve versus renewable energy supply curves (the "duck curve")
I’ve expanded my knowledge of electricity generation about 10x during the course of this video. I’ve never understood what 3 phase meant, but it’s explained here in about 10 seconds in a clear way. Thanks.
If you “understood” what’s three-phase electricity in 10 seconds, you clearly didn’t even investigate what it was.
As a mechanical engineer I always had trouble understanding electricity thank you for breaking down this complex topic into an easy way to learn!
Mechanical engineer here too. Its much easier to grasp the concepts if you equate electricity with hydraulics where current is fluid flow, voltage is pressure and resistance is bends in a pipe.
wtf have you just startet studing? this video isnt even covering the basics. All these so to speak "educational videos" are nothing more than entertainment it feels
Electric fields do not travel inside a powerline. Nor do they travel on the surface of a conduit/powerline. The greatest field theorist that ever lived, Charles Proteus Steinmetz, clearly stated in his books that electric fields do not exist inside nor on the surface of a powerline. They in fact travel outside the powerline in concentric coaxial paths of dielectricity and magnetism. An electric field doesn't exist inside a capacitor but exists outside the area surrounding the capacitor. This is what makes electric grids and electric gadgets so vulnerable and exposed to shorting out from other surrounding fields, like an electric storm.
Particle physicists claim electrons are bumping each other down a powerline to create electric flow. This is false and patently absurd. JJ Thompson who discovered the electron clearly stated it was a "field", and NOT a particle. If electrons were bumping each other down a powerline to conduct electric flow then how do you explain how your wireless cell phones work? Bumping electrons through the air, LOL!!???
As far as an AC generator is concerned, it's creating more energy than it's being given. So where does the extra energy come from? Counter-space, aka the Ether. Why would you need a generator to accumulate electric energy from a source when all you'd need is a step up/down transformer to do that with? So why were AC generators created? To draw in the energy coming from counter-space. All generators have a stator which passes by two internal magnets. Magnets are also anchored into counter-space, aka the Ether. The stator passing the internal magnets of an AC generator can draw out the added energy from those magnets in which it's output becomes greater than it's input.
James Clerk Maxwell said, "If you don't understand counter-space, then you cannot understand this universe".
Can you imagine Nicola Tesla's mind doing contortions when he invented the AC generator? He obviously understood counter-space, aka the Ether, because he couldn't have invented the AC generator if he didn't. The five greatest minds, Oliver Heaviside, James Clerk Maxwell, Nicola Tesla, Faraday, and Charles Proteus Steinmetz gave us our entire electric grid and by extension from their work, all electronics as well. We owe them everything we have today. No particle physicist or theoretical mathematician could ever boast such a claim.
@@joerenaud8292 thanks for your time writing... this is the reason why I comb to countless comments... to find treasure like yours.
@Benjamin Urbina treasure? It’s fool’s gold at best.
I am pretty familiar with RUclips and educational material, and you are really outstanding in the field. Keep it up, Grady! Thank you.
You do a great job. Explaining things so easy a 6 year old can understand it. OUTSTANDING.
3:30 another advantage of using AC is that switching it off is far easier than with DC.
How so?
Seriously asking btw.
@@claqyagami6914 inductance wants the current to keep flowing and to do so it creates arcs on opening contacts... AC goes through zero which helps to break the arc, with DC it just keeps burning with the heat of a thousand suns :D
@@claqyagami6914 Whenever current flows and you open a switch, an electric arc is created. As long as the voltage is big enough and current is flowing, the arc won't go away.
AC has changing voltage, i.e. from -170V to +170V. This means that there is also 0V somewhere in between. If there is no Voltage no current flowing any arc is going to stop. Therefore AC has the advantage of self extinguishing arcs.
With DC any arc won't stop itself, unless you have special switches to basically extinguish the arc.
@@thrownchance Let me add that voltage and current do not have to be zero at the same time. In fact, they usually are not. And for switching, it's the current passing through zero that matters, not the voltage.
@@thrownchance so unless the gap is long enough to isolate the conductors of the breaker through air resistance, you'd have to physically inject an electric isolator between them to break the electric arc or have some kind of varistor on either side of the breaker to strangle the flow first?
In the UK when there is a big game of football on in the ad breaks power companies increase the amount electricity because of all the tea we make
mitchell182 Do you guys make some scrumpets too?
this is so British
get th'kettle on then . . . 1 lump or 2 . . .
Hydroelectric dams are _perfect_ for power spokes like that: they don't need to boil water, or start up a glorified jet turboshaft engine; just open a gate, and let the water fall into the blades.
I heard that in the pre-streaming world the power companies used "number of people currently watching t.v" as a way to estimate how much power they need.
Love it! I spent a few seasons around 2004 as a grid/engine operator at McMurdo Station, Antarctica, and this is a perfect explanation of our fairly simple system. No steam generation tho; just diesel engines powering turbines directly. At the time, the equipment was from the 60's and so syncing the frequencies to bring on a fresh engine meant eyeing a synchroscope and making sure your hand was steady! Thanks for another great video!
You actually managed to make the ad part fun to watch without overdoing it. Happy viewers make happy sponsors and allow us to watch your great content. WIN!
You should do a video of the distribution side of utilities (overhead and underground) and the tactics employed to maintain a reliable grid for customers.
"Distirbuted power", or even "multi-headed" trains, is probably a better railway analogy to the "multiple generators on the grid" situation regarding maintaining frequency.
You should talk more about what role batteries play in trying to smoothe out the demand curve, the challenges, and what a grid with only intermittent generation sources could look like.
I’m an Operating Engineer in Canada, I’ve worked in nuclear, natural gas(currently in cogeneration) , and biomass plants. And I love this video, keep up the amazing videos!
It might be neat to show how some plants try to squeeze the most efficiency out of our systems, such as use of combined cycles and heat recovery steam generators. Or anything really when it comes to the Rankine Cycle.
Love your videos Grady. They give me a completly new perspective on the world around me. Keep up the awesomeness.
I don't understand electricity and after many video's from Grady I still don't (not really) but it did make me MUCH MORE appreciative of the power grit and less grumpy when it fails in my rural area. I'm at awe actually that it doesn't fail more often.
Something I'm surprised I haven't seen developed is small-scale pumped storage for high rise buildings. Basically take a water tower, build a high rise underneath it, and put a hydroelectric turbine and water pump in the basement. Pump up water during the night when excess is available, and let some of the water flow down during the day to help with high demands. It could also be used to smooth the demand curve out when sudden changes happen or even store potable water for emergency situations.
It's probably to expensive to do in a building. Remember, electricity is cheap. Pump storage is very common in mountainous areas, because you don't need to build the building.
This is an approximation to give you an estimate to how infeasible it is to do this. If you lift 50 tonnes of water 10 metres you have approximately stored 1kWh of energy assuming 100% efficiency. Given a typical skyrise power use (only the scale of hundreds of kWs) you'd need to lift hundreds of thousands of tonnes of water on top of 100m skyrise. More than the mass of the building itself
@@Oliver-ho4jz thanks for the numbers. To be clear, I wasn’t picturing a building being able to produce a large percentage of its own demands. I meant for the idea to be a supplemental sort of thing. I do understand though that water itself is heavy as hell (1 m³ ≈ 1000 kg) so storing a bunch of it 100 meters off the ground is no joke. In some locations I imagine it would even be an earthquake hazard.
This was so unbelievably helpful! I've been trying to figure out how electricity is made for ages, and nobody explained it as well as Practical Engineering!
"Energy cannot be created nor destroyed."
All Generators are merely transformers and nothing more.
You still have not "figured out how electricity is made for ages"..
@@seanregehr4921 well... I guess I meant to say I didn't know how exactly power got converted into electricity for a number of years until this sorta cleared it up for me
sorry for the confusion friend
Never thought or knew about the inertia concept. Fascinating! Thank you!
I can watch this channel for hours. So intriguing but the concepts are explained in a way that’s easily understandable
Alot of software performs the synchroscope RYB (Red Yellow Blue) phase alignment, but they do still exist between diesel generators on ships and submarines (where PARALLELING is naturally required). Important on bringing e.g. the "coming-on" generator into circuit, and shutting down the - well you guessed it - the "going-off" generator. Realistically, the generators have names. Grady fantastic stuff just before I go to sleep before my night shift. Especially the "spinning standby" bit.
I've tried off and on to understand load balancing and how I can flip a switch and it not collapse the power grid for years...and you finally made it click with me when you showed the load on the brushless motor when you shorted the circuit. Thanks Grady!!!
Because power diminishes while it's resistance reduces the power
Another thing that can crash the mains is a alternating oscillation
That was the greatest visualisation and description of electricity i have ever watched, honestly i knew most of the concepts and theory of how it worked, but this explains it so simply and effectively. Well played sir!
I'd love to see another video on this series explaining generation synchronization and the synchro scope in more detail please.
Spinning reserve is not extra generators ready, it's the capacity of existing generators to "step on the gas" more. Thus already "spinning".
I believe that is what he meant to say.
You could also do a video on how electricity suppliers counter the capacitive & inductive loads that cities place on the grid.
Probably a bit too specific for this channel.
In germany capacitive compensation for inductive loads is done at the customers site. From small capacitors to compensate for a vac motor to huge capacitor banks with active control to get the delta phi in heavy industry down again.
To my knowledge, suppliers do very little in regards of compensation, because it is extremely difficult for them to do. The latest point at which you can act is the secondy side of the transormer the customer is connected to. In heavy industry that usually IS the client's site.
I wish somebody could explain it in plain English, I work in a power station and I still don’t fully understand the principle of reactive power.
@@DasIllu Not quite, you CAN correct the power factor further from an industrial customer and after a transformer, but it is not as effective. After all, the reason why you correct the power factor is to reduce the ohmic losses in the transmission line. If you correct it further away from the load, you still get extra losses up to that point.
Also, it´s not enough to just switch in capacitors or inductors. Especially these days, 3rd harmonic currents caused by switching power supplies (without APFC) require a "Zigzag Transformer" to be corrected.
@@AE92World Reactive power is simply energy that is stored in some part of the AC cycle and then discharges back into the grid later in the AC cycle.
Capacitors charge when the voltage is increasing and discharge when the voltage is dropping. At the peaks of the sine wave, it´s fully charged, so no more current flows into them. (as opposed to any resistive load which draws the maximum current at the peak of the sine wave)
Inductors work in the same but opposite way.
(In the power grid nothing prevents power from flowing from your home into the grid.)
Hope this helps.
I finally understand 3 phase power! THANK YOU!!!!
"interested, involved educated" - Grady you have done your bit, thank you. I suggest that not enough people comprehend how much CONTINUOUS energy input (work) is required to generate power for the grid. Ataching a generator [alternator] to a push bike was very instructive to me.
Can you do a video on TBMs (Tunnel Boring Machines)? And how engineers bore a tunnel while keeping it structurally sound. Would love to see a video on that! Thumbs up so everyone can learn!
CONGRATS On 1 Million subscribers!! Great video as usual Grady!
This was a really informative video for me, and it gave me a few new considerations, and appreciations for the challenge of switching to renewable energy sources. Thank you Grady. Keep up the good work! Your videos introduce a lot of new concepts to me.
Bruh the explanations are so so so clear, thanks for simplifying all these concepts this well!!!
I appreciate how clearly you explained the basic components of a generator. I knew it had to do with magnets, wires and rotation, but that was it. Please make more videos, yours is one of my favorite channels!
“We have a vage understanding of from where it comes from” Not like with milk, which clearly comes from the supermarket😂😂😂
Ha
I know two headed cow
they separate it from the chocolate milk, dont be a fool
😂😂😂 😂😂😂 😂😂😂 ahmm...but sadly, in some cases, true.
*vague*
Can we just appreciate he didnt strech it 2 seconds longer?
Would the extra 2 seconds and possible one mid roll ad really bother you that much? I'd prefer him to actually make it over 10 minutes, and throw a mid roll ad in there. Watching one extra ad is totally worth the quality content he provides for free.
You know I have an Adblocker.
I just hate It when people stretch out their videos without adding any real content .
(In this case It wouldnt be a problem anyway)
Thats why I really appreciate it. It shows he isnt greedy.
@@kaulquapil6280 There are some ad blockers where you can filter out RUclips channels that you actually don't mind supporting. This solution is probably best for both parties. (For example the original AdBlock)
@@kaulquapil6280 No, he's Grady.
I'm just over here enjoying youtube red.
That was very interesting. I really enjoy how you break things down so that everyone can understand the topic. I hope the dinner turned out well.
A thing I would be interested in learning about. How distributed generation works. We are having solar power panels installed on our hour this week. During the day any excess power we generate is sold to our power supplier. I am kinda curious how that power gets transmitted and to whom.
I love your videos, as a telecoms engineer who doesn't know much about civils. I am fascinated by the evolution of the sound absorbing sponge on your wall too. Is there a video on them coming?
There's a joke that goes like this: "Nuclear power? I don't know what we need it for - everybody I've talked to gets their power from the wall socket!"
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. no
That's basically what happened in California. Now wonder electricity costs are through the roof.
The wall socket power is fed by solar panels and free magnetic energy the base load power is coal fired
this is literally what enviromentalists and greens think. Electricity comes from the wall, water comes from the faucet, and money comes from banks, so we don't need disgusting power plants or water pumps!
@@MrTeddy12397 it's not that we dont need them, we definitely need them right now. It's that we should be working harder to find cleaner replacements for them so that we dont need as many of them I the future. The people I hate the most when it comes to topics like this are the ones that think it's impossible to harm the environment and that fossil fuels are infinite. In another comment section there was a person trying to argue that fossil fuels are not made of decayed pre-existing life forms and dont take millions of years to form but are actually continuously made inside the earth and therefore an infinite renewable resource that doesnt pollute the environment.
Completely wild that the electricity in the light I just turned on came directly from the power source milliseconds ago. Never thought of it that way! Thanks for the awesome video!
Sort of true. The force (voltage) travels at close to the speed of light, but the physical electrons actually travel quite slowly, in the order of centimetres per second.
@@golfmike13 Yes, but the actual electrons don't need to travel from one place to another to transfer electric energy. Also in AC, the electrons just vibrate.
Holy hell that child working the unprotected drive shaft at 7:00 made me so thankful for labor regulations
Uh oh where did my hands go
huh i just noticed that now, thought it was just a young man
1:58 while getting water really hot is a common theme, I believe there is a larger central concept: utilizing fluid (in this case counting gasses as a fluid) to transfer kinetic energy to a turbine or other device that converts to rotational motion (which will usually either turn a generator or directly power a device). This includes most of the same techniques as getting water really hot (excluding rare peltier applications, etc), as well as hydroelectric, wind, and even pneumatic, etc.
You could theoretically use a gas as your fluid. Although i think it needs higher temperatures to be efficient. There's an idea to use a combined cycle high temperature nuclear reactor (HTGR;MSR or FBR) that operates with a Brayton gas cycle and then has a steam generator feeding a normal Rankine cycle steam turbine.
I’d hate to be on that train. Shifting back and forth 60 times a second. Drinking tea would be impossible.
Great explanation. Two key reasons for 3 phase generation, not discussed: it forms the basis for interconnected and synchronized generators and it allows self-starting and reversable induction motors.
Great exploration of power grid basics! I've gotten a little more into these concepts every year, and am always happy to learn more.
Hey Grady, thanks for talking about how electrical power is generated.
Found this page a week ago. And already loving the content
A fantastic video, Grady! I'm teaching about generators in high school and I'll probably borrow generously from the way you presented your ideas in this video 😅 also I heard you recently on Flash Forward, which was lovely :)
@Practical Engineering, note Correction @ 1:52 :
1. Hydro does not convert water to steam, its just pressure head converted to kinetic energy at the water turbine (hydrodynamics).
2. Natural gas: Most NG/LNG power plants do not have a boiler either, they just combust NG in a gas turbine (gas thermodynamics) which drives the generator directly coupled to it. No steam involved here either.
Well done Grady, I was expecting it to be crap, sorry been in the industry all my life and most engineers don't know how it works.
I'm thinking I still don't quite know how it works. It seems to be a fairly involved process.
It's actually quite simple in concept if you have a working understanding of high school level electrical physics. Grady does his research and clearly puts a lot of work into making accurate and easy to understand content.
Eric Christian, yup it’s very simple if you already understand it. 😁😁😁
Excellent video as always, nothing that was new to me. But you managed to explain a lot of aspects in a short clear explanation, there's an art to that which few people do well. It's not dumbed down to meaninglessness and avoided being overly technical with complicated jargon.
Didn't actually mind the ad at the end either, usually they are a minor annoyance that I accept as the cost of free available videos. Content creators have to live, but this combination of you preparing it, some cooking bloopers and the final result with a narration along with it beats the standard story with stock footage hands down (those get actually annoying with repetition!)
What gets me is that by initial training 30+ years ago, I was an electro-mechanical engineer for 10 years before moving into IT. Come on Grady: do a vid on Uninterruptible Power Supplies! These things (UPS's) really do work,
Thanks for a concise and accurate overview of a very complex system. You covered the high points very well. Refreshing.
I’m getting ready to build an off grid tiny home. This really helps my understanding of generating electricity. Thanks a bunch!
Great video! You mention that alternative power sources cause challenges; please go into more details on how this is / will-be addressed going forward.
For those interested in more about the pros and cons of nuclear power, there is an excellent documentary on the subject, presented by Derek Muller of Veritasium. It's called "Uranium: Twisting the dragon's tail"
Okay i love your video but can we talk about how that was the most wholesome sponsor plug ever?
How about you make a video describing exactly how power from wind turbines gets injected into the grid? Love to see that! Thanks!
Hi sir
You have explained nicely so that other than electrical engineer can understand..
Iam an electrical engineer...
Its nice to watch your videos..
Thanks for the video sir...🙏👍😊
Practical engineering: upload this video and 3:40 use a scope.
Electroboom: Medhi breathing heavily
Can't wait to see Grady - Mehdi in one video
hahahahahahahhaaa
Mehdi: ''Giveaway time!!!''
So the inertia in the power system is essentially flywheel storage of kinetic energy within a generator that can be instantly converted to electrical energy under increasing load?
Imagine if a generator stops working but the demand stays the same. The other generators on the system will have to compensate by generating more power, hence affecting the behavior in those, that's the intertia that the electrical system puts on the generators. The same works the other way, if a load gets disconnected from the system, the generators will move more "freely" with the weight taken out of the system, that's the inertia.
Excited to learn the concept of the mass rotational energy and its stabilizing effect on phase stability.
If you've lived in an under-developed country, you certainly appreciate reliable electricity generation and delivery.
Your username is making me do a big think.
let us all hope that practical engineering triumphs over impractical politics
i wanna smash your like button so hard it breaks!
Simply outstanding; thank you for a comprehensive tutorial of the power generation system.
The generators don't have permanent magnets in them as in the little demo. Instead they use coils which are energised to become electromagnets and are termed "self-exciting". This is how the Earth's magnetic field is generated, electric currents circulating in a conducting fluid of molten nickel-iron alloy in the core.
Brilliant videos ! 👍🏻
Fun fact: the Japanese power grid operates at two different frequencies - 60 cycles in eastern Japan, 50 in western Japan.
Edit: in-home voltage in Japan is 110-115V. Most American domestic appliances will work fine.
Another obscure fact for your next Trivial Pursuit game - there are also 25Hz and 40Hz systems in North America. 25Hz was the frequency chosen for industrial use, and was the frequency at some of the original Niagara Falls power plants. Today, the largest remaining 25Hz system is the Amtrak rail line between Washington DC and New York. 40Hz was chosen for special applications in the late 19th century, and has almost completely disappeared. There is one hydroelectric power plant near Albany, NY that still generates at 40Hz, and until recently, there was some 40Hz load in a paper mill in Maine.
110v 60Hz appliances don't work well at 50Hz. (Synchronous Clocks will lose 10 minutes per hour). 50Hz and 60Hz are close, but as frequency goes down smoke goes up.
I believe Japanese use 100V, not 110V or 115V. By the way, there's a specific reason why you might see 110V, 115V, or 120V mentioned in the United States. Single phase transformers, which are used in residential and most farming operations are 220V, the transformers are center tapped, which provides half that voltage to the neutral = 110V.
The most common lower voltage 3 phase systems are 208V, when you center tap the transformer between three phases, any hot to neutral voltage would be 208/1.73 = 120V. The square root of 3 = 1.73.
It doesn't mean that your home is really going to measure exactly 110V/220V and commercial is going to measure exactly 120V/208V. These are design voltages, they are still called the above even if their measured voltages vary from those values.
Not knowing whether an appliance such as a microwave oven or a TV will be used in a home or a business, the manufacturer may choose to design to the midpoint between 110V and 120V, which is 115V. Most appliances are designed to work at their design voltage +/- 10% So, most 115V devices will work fine from 103.5V to 126.5V, which will cover residential and commercial voltages and some variation to boot.
@kcotte59
I hope you read this big ass response because I put a lot of time into answering your question (to the nth degree).
The US is 120V/240V (phase to phase div by 2) in homes and usually 120V/208V (phase to phase div by 1.732) in businesses.
European phase to phase voltage is either 380V or 400V, depending on country. The single phase voltages (hot to neutral) follow the same math I laid out before, divide the 3 ph voltage by 1.732 (the sq root of 3). So, 3 ph 380V has a single phase voltage of 219V (usually called 220V). 3 ph 400V has a single phase voltage of 230.9V (usually called 230V).
Voltages can easily be adjusted with transformers, so 220V/380V or 230V/400V can come from the same exact power grid, but be transformed to the desired voltage in the community or factory it is being used.
However, 50Hz and 60Hz cannot exist on the same grid. Most of the world that had strong trade with Europe in 1900 and beyond went 50Hz and most of the countries that had strong trade ties to the US went with 60Hz.
The only REAL challenge with equipment meant for one Hz over another is AC motor speeds. An electric motor designed to run on 60Hz at 1750 rpm would run at 1250 rpm if connected to 50Hz. Conversely, European AC motors would run faster on US 60Hz than designed.
Equipment that have AC motors and aren't speed critical, such as compactors, some conveyors, pumps, mixers, etc can run on 60Hz or 50Hz, the system will just run faster or slower, depending on higher or lower Hz, respectively.
Equipment that have more critical speeds and are designed to operate at 50Hz or 60Hz exists, but they use variable frequency inverters to change the motor speeds. Variable frequency inverters are also simply used for speed controls in many applications, so it's a manufacturer of equipment wouldn't have to necessarily rework an entire machine for the equipment to cross continents. But, the type of equipment I'm talking about is factory equipment and may still require a transformer within the factory to achieve the correct voltage.
I wouldn't bother trying to run home appliances from countries using significantly different voltages, unless your on vacation and you have an adapter. Frequency usually makes little difference in home appliances, other than a potential loss of efficiency.
If you understand all that I've said, feel good. I've had to explain this exact same material to multiple degreed electrical engineers. I don't know why this isn't covered in a base EE degree.
@@cornpop7805 110 and 220 are antique terms/voltages. In 1967 the U.S. adopted a standard house voltage of 120/240. This is accomplish by tapping the center connection of the two series connected 120-V secondary windings of a single-phase transformer. On a well layed out electrical panel the 120-V circuits are equally distributed to ONE of the two ends and the center tap.The larger 240-V appliance circuits connect across the outer ends. The commercial 3-phase 120/208 voltage is accomplish not by center tapping the windings. But by banking three single-phase transformers who have their two secondary 120-V windings reconnected from series to parallel for a 120-V output (i.e. from 240 to 120) then the same termnal of each of three secondaries are connected forming the neutral connection or what is known as a Y configuration. So when you connect to the neutral and the opposite terminal on any of the three transformers you receive 120-V. Because of the 120-degree phase shift between phases, when you connect between the opposite terminal of one transformer and the opposite terminal of any one of the other two transformers you recieve 208-V. 120-V x (sq.root of 3) = 208-V. Of course the 3-phase loads such as motors, connect to the opposite terminal of each of the three transformers.
I really needed this video for my studies thank you a lot. This information is important & hopefully motivates many more individuals to work together on these fields of energy production.
Always well written, interesting, and well delivered. You make the difficult simple to grasp, thus increasing interest in wanting to know more. Thank you.
What do I think? This show is absolutely amazing. Not only is it beautifully put together, it's smart and easy to follow along. You remind me a lot of Adam from Myrhbusters. The right parts of funny and informative, put together in an easy to follow narrative, that is both enjoyable to listen to, and easy to follow along. Keep it up Grady, there is a reason you effortlessly (from a viewers perspective) hit and are surpassing the 1m sub' count! 😱
😊 😎
Love the Kitty btw 😼 😽 I'm sure 'Simon's Cat' would approve. Being a life long person that is owned by cats, I know my masters would approve 😹
Great video, informative and easy to digest.
After watching I feel I could probably build my own working power plant for me and my neighbors.
Slightly off topic but, "Do you know how to hook up a VCR?"
Another excellent video! That's coming from a long-time energy industry professional. Your videos should be required viewing by all who have input into the crafting of energy policy at every level.
Such a good video!! Thank you for your sensible and clear explanations and quality content
Nuclear power is, in most respects, the next best thing to renewable. Sure, it has radioactive waste, but by the time it leaves the generator the half-life is long enough that half-decent shielding brings the radioactive flux down to the level of background radiation. The biggest problem (as long as you don't build them on fault lines or turn off their safety systems for a test) is the impact is has on nuclear weapon proliferation, and the right fuels can mitigate that. I'd pick that for my "inertia-rich generator," at least in areas where hydroelectricity and geothermal aren't viable.
We can actually burn that spent fuel, which about 40% of it is Plutonium at the end of a fuel bundle's life, in special fast reactors. Unfortunately, this hasn't taken off due to economic reasons and nuclear security. I believe France is looking into it, though.
It can go underground, currently in the USA that project is on hold.
It's also far from a dead power source, if natural gas wasn't so cheap (at the moment) more than just a couple new units in the US would be being built right now. China and other countries certainly believe in the power source.
The other thing is that a lot of people are scared of them because of Chernobyl and the whole "radiation" thing. Publicizing the facts and how many we have in the US could help with that.
Nuclear plants have the same "inertia rich" turbines that any plant using steam (coal, gas, solar reflector) has.
Great video. If only we invested money from renewables into fission. I see it as the only technologically feasible way to reducing emissions in the immediate future. The way things are looking we may even crack fusion soon - then it will be a different story all together
Great video! I study Electric Engineering. You just summarized visually a whole semester! You talked a little on Generation Response, maybe in a future video you can talk about the other side of the coin, that is, Demand Response. Also, you could explain deeper why the rotatory inercia is so crucial in keeping the power grid up!
Thanks a lot for you videos
Really cool video! It would be interesting to see a video about mechanical power storage for grid stabilisation - flywheels and things like that.
As an electrical engineer, I wish more people would watch this video to appreciate the complexity of having power on demand.
I have a question for EEs such as yourself. A power unit generates power in watts (0% to 100%) as a product of amps & volts. Are the volts, at the generator outlet fixed? If so, what is typical? For example, a large nuc puts out about 1 gigawatt at full load (via 2 generators) what are the volts, what are the amps? Thanks to whoever weighs in!
A large part of why solar is "cheap" is because of subsidies...
Dont spoil communist magic
Thanks for taking my suggestion. Glad to see such a good reaction to your video. Keep it up. I've watched all your videos. I like them a lot. ^_^
This video was really interesting, love how you explain things!
Electricity generation is fascinating!
Hey! That first city shot is HCMC, Vietnam. I'm in that photo, somewhere!
nope, its Sài Gòn =.=
F
Anyone else smell something burning in here?
@@lycu3272 Same same
I appreciate your motivation of wanting to educate power generation for the success of the energy transition!
Thanks, I worked for the power company for years and we never discussed power delivery. Great Work, FR