Electricity generation explained

                                                                                         

Electricity is present throughout nature, in the form of the static electricity in thunder clouds and neurons, but there is no direct natural source of flowing electricity of the type required by electrical appliances.

Instead, electricity has to be generated by using a primary source of energy such as coal, nuclear, or solar power, and is often referred to as being a secondary energy source for this reason.

Before the advent of electricity, the heating, lighting, and refrigeration needs of a typical dwelling were met by devices such as wood stoves, gas lamps, and ice houses.

These were not nearly as controllable or convenient as their electrical equivalents and soon died a death once these came on the scene. However, these required a constant supply of energy, which necessitated the construction of several large power plants.

The principle behind the modern electric generator is still the same as that pioneered by Michael Faraday in the 1830s, when he discovered that turning a magnet inside a coil of wire induced a current in the wire.

Although a traditional magnet can be used for this purpose, they are not normally powerful enough to generate a useful amount of electricity. Due to the fact that electromagnets can be made a great deal stronger than traditional magnets, it is this type that is used in power plant generators.

A typical generator consists of a series of insulated coils of wire, forming a stationary cylinder around a rotating electromagnet. As the magnet rotates, a small current is induced in each section of the wire coil, which, when combined with the currents from all the other wires, forms one large current that feeds a flow of electrons directly into the electrical grid.

The electromagnet gets its rotational energy from a device running on a primary energy source such as a turbine or a combustion engine. The best that most electrical plants are able to manage is to turn around a third of the primary energy used in the generation process into electricity. The rest is usually dissipated as heat, although more modern designs have ways of capturing and re-using some of this heat to bring the efficiency rating of the plant closer to 40%.

By far the most common type of power plant in operation at the moment uses a steam turbine to produce electricity. A turbine is a device which turns the kinetic energy in a moving fluid such as liquid or gas into mechanical energy, which can then be used to turn the electromagnet in a generator. In a steam turbine powered by coal, oil, gas, or wood, the fuel is burned in order to boil water, producing steam that pushes the blades of the turbine.

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