My superficial understanding of grids is that there's a balancing of demand and supply going on. Clearly this cannot be exact, so there is some wriggle room and I would be that energy providers over supply slightly rather than under supply.

But increasingly I am reading articles about this situation
1) State (all the articles I've read describe a situation in Australia or the USA) encourages people to get solar systems and has a buy back scheme which makes the idea attractive to the home owner.

2) They then run into a problem with too much power being generated in the middle of the day. They'd rather have that big burst of power later in the day, and apparently there are problems with TOO MUCH power on the grid.

OK... so the grid is a transmission device, not a storage device. What happens if there is too much power on the grid?

Edited February 27, 20205 yr by Bobster

1 hour ago, Bobster said:

What happens if there is too much power on the grid?

Simple answer: The voltage goes up.

More complex answer (which I am not qualified to give): I am pretty sure that messes with regulatory devices/processes designed to keep that voltage in check.

This article explains the dilemma facing the utilities:

https://www.economist.com/briefing/2017/02/25/a-world-turned-upside-down