How do we balance the grid?
Every day, people like you trust us to keep energy flowing across Great Britain at all times, be that to homes, businesses, schools, or hospitals. By 'balancing' the grid, we maintain a steady energy supply every second. We'll help you understand the basics of this process.
Inertia, frequency, voltage, and thermal are the key players in our grid balancing act. Inertia helps maintain stability; frequency ensures the flow of electricity is consistent, voltage regulates the power level, and thermal manages the heat generated. Together, these components ensure a consistent and reliable power system.
Demand fluctuates throughout the day, and is influenced by a number of unpredictable factors, such as the weather and the season. If you consider how environmental factors like these can change at a moment's notice, it’s clear we need a lot of tools at our disposal.
We take great care in closely monitoring and adjusting the voltage and frequency of the electricity flowing into your home. This process ensures that all your household appliances, from your refrigerator to your TV, receive the exact amount of power they need to function safely and efficiently.
Our work ensures that this happens smoothly and efficiently, working with industry partners to provide ‘ancillary services’ that keep our electricity supply reliable, affordable, and safe.
Balancing the Grid - Interactive game
At NESO we keep the grid balanced to ensure that electricity supply always meets demand. To achieve this highly complex activity, we have a team of experts in our control centre who are responsible for monitoring how demand rises and falls throughout the day, how it is affected by the weather and seasons, and to ensure there is always enough supply at a moment’s notice.
To give you some insight into the world of balancing the grid, we’ve developed a game where you can attempt to keep the grid stable while facing some of the challenges our control room operatives experience daily.
How does storage help us balance the grid?
Energy storage allows us to move energy through time, capturing it when we have too much and saving it for when we don’t have enough.
What are constraints payments?
It’s our job to keep the cost of running the system as low as possible, so we can keep energy bills down. One of the ways we do this is with constraint payments.
What are margins?
Our role as Britain’s energy system operator is to manage the flow of electricity around the grid so it’s available when people need it – and that means keeping the supply secure.
What are system notices?
Everything you need to know about the different types of system notices and why we issue them.
What is frequency?
Frequency literally means the number of times something happens over a period of time.
What is inertia?
So things that are not moving need a force – like a gust of wind – to get them moving, while things that are moving will keep moving unless a force, like friction, causes…
What is restoration?
Restoration refers to the process of restarting the grid following a power cut and it is a requirement for us, as NESO, to have a process in place in the event of a partial or total shut down.
What is voltage?
Voltage is what makes electric charges move. It is the 'push' that causes charges to move in a wire or other electrical conductor.