The Other Mike wrote:
On Thu, 03 Nov 2011 10:17:20 +0000, The Natural Philosopher
wrote:

The major contribution of *any* power station is reducing demand on the
grid to exactly zero, overall.

Maybe you possibly meant to say increasing generation until the system
is balanced


No. The grid is always balanced since it has no storage whatsoever.
What is being usued is exactly being generated.

generation = demand+losses

grid losses are very small.


In the distant past before privatisation that was correct but now not
all generators perform balancing, reduce the system frequency and the
system voltage and they will deliberately continue at their previous
power output until they drop off the bars on low system volts or low
system frequency.

exactly. Its always in balance.