Engineering in Plain Sight Quotes

“If the worst comes, and there is not enough electricity to meet demands, grid managers will require that some customers be temporarily disconnected (called load shedding) to reduce demands and avoid a total collapse. Normally these disconnections happen on a rolling basis of 15 to 30 minutes to spread out the inconvenience of lost service, so they are often known as rolling outages.”
― Grady Hillhouse, Engineering in Plain Sight: An Illustrated Field Guide to the Constructed Environment

“To avoid brownouts and blackouts, generation must be continuously adjusted up or down to match electrical demands on the grid. This process is called load following, just like a locomotive adjusts its throttle to account for changes in grade along the way.”
― Grady Hillhouse, Engineering in Plain Sight: An Illustrated Field Guide to the Constructed Environment