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electrical question

Someone on the "madsci" service asked this question:

I am under the impression that the wests electrical power grid is many
power plants feeding power into a centralized grid for distribution to
any place on that grid. I want to know how they kept the alternating
current from all the different sources in phase with each other. I have
heard that today it is done with a master sync signal from satelites to
each power generating station. Is that true and how did they used to
sync them pre-satelites?

This one is interesting. What does happen when you connect *two* simple
AC generators to the same load resistor? Wouldn't they automatically lock
into sync, maybe after a brief transient? I assume that if the initial
phase difference was wrong, one of them would be driven as a motor until
it drifted to the correct relationship.

WHen dealing with multi-generator grids, maybe nobody needs to
intentionally synchronize an extra AC generator except initially?


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