Earth Hour: When we stop using power for an hour, is the power we would have used still generated?

Question

It just occured to me that while everyone is in love with Earth Hour, and I am aware of the symbolism behind it, there are many who claim that noticeable amounts of energy are saved in these acts.

My question is, when a power station is churning along at normal usage, and then suddenly an event like Earth Hour comes suddenly, not gradually, and suddenly there are hundreds of Megawatts that aren't being consumed, what happens to that extra electricity?

Is it wasted? Recycled at the end of its run? Or does it simply stay in the lines until the demand picks back up? Or does the power station adjust its output to match the amount of power being drained from usage?

Because it would be very ironic to 'save' this energy if the power station still burns through just as many materials to produce the power in the first place.

I hope my question is clear and that I chose the correct category to post this.

Answer 1

I work in a power plant. The generators can only put out what the current demand is so it can not be stored. The boilers that produce the steam take awhile to raise and lower the load. If there would be no demand suddenly the Generator will probably trip off like a circuit breaker in your home. Most generator take a few hours to get back on after they trip. They also can't take a sudden reload. So the utility will open distribution circuits and bring the load back up as the generator can take the load. Theoretically it could be a huge outage for several hours and could possibly damage the boilers or generators causing a shortage of power. This occurs sometimes during storms tornado or hurricane knocks down line that cuts the load and the unit trips out.

I hope this answers your question.

Answer 2

the average cities houses shutting down for a hour doesnt really effect the power supply its when the whole city shuts down

Answer 3

I celebrated earth hour at 3am, when I was sleeping.  It doesnt make any sense to not use power for one hour.  The effects it has are next to nothing in the big picture, and it just turns out to be a huge inconvenience.  

Earth hour is a gimmick, like we're really going to save the earth from global warming because we stopped using power for one hour out of the 8760 that are in a year.

Some people argue that the power used to generate the earth hour publicity campaign would have offset any good that this may have done.   Others argue that the change is so insignificant that its barely noticable, barely a couple of percent which is indistinguishable from zero.

So to anwer your question, did we save any power?  For all the publicity and c**p that was generated, Id be surprised if it did any good at all.

Answer 4

Its like a huge protest to the electrical companies and as a matter of fact it is saving power because we dont use anything electrical for this hour so no co2 is emitted from our homes.

Answer 5

the power station adjusts the input and output, and also, if there is too much power (ex many people in one place stops using electricity for 1 hour), the extra power gets transfered into neighboring power grids.

However if you think about it, the majority of the electricity goes to power businesses and not private houses. (ex. all those lights in wal-mart? or maybe the automatic manufacturing plant somewhere, aluminum refinery perhaps?)

and there are also those places that ALWAYS NEED electricity like the hospital, or subway.

However, theoretically, if a lot of people turned off their power(not just their light, lights are relatively conservative at using electricity). at the exact moment, it could burn out a power grid and cause wide-spread black out. Besides, those generators takes a while to get back to full power ( few hours).