PSPkiller Wrote:wow,  nice find. its strange how more  energy  is produced  than  is consumed. i wonder  waht happens to that  excess energy? stored?  wasted?

EDIT: this reminds me  of  something. there is a power  station in north wales at  a place called Dinorwig. there are 2  lakes,  a top one and a bottom one.  water  flows  down from the top one, powers generators  and  flows out into the bottom lake. During the night when there is spare electricity floating aroung the national grid, all the water  is pumped back up  to the top lake.  because  of this the  power station isn't used very often because it can't actually produce electricity,  it just stores it up for later use like a giant capacitor. One time it was used  was at the  end of the 2006 football  (soccer for all you  out  there in ameriacaland) world cup  final.

at the end  of the game there was a massive increase in the demand of electricity  as  everyone boiled the kettle for a cup of tea at the end of the game. the operators at the power  station were all watching the game  so they could work out  when to turn on the turbines. too early, and there would be too much power in the grid and things would start to explode. too late and there wouldnt  be enough power in the grid and  there would be massive blackouts.

anyway,  the  operators had to turn on the turbines about 10 seconds before the big spike  in demand (the power station only takes about  10 seconds to go from fully off to fully operational). they were hoping that the game  wouldnt  go into penalties because it would be  harder for them to judge when to turn on the power. the game  did go into penalties and they just  had to guess when to hit the button. luckily they were only about 2  seconds too late. the AC frequency of the power dropped from 50hz to 48hz. lights dimmed and  TV's flickered but the power stayed on as the grid struggled to power the nations kettles. after a few seconds it recovered and everyone sat  down for  a good cuppa.

In case you're  wandering why i know this i went on a geography field  trip  to north wales and  had  a tour  around the power station last year.

EDIT 2: damn, i know too much...