Electricity Generation Explained - By: Dave Sabri

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, this type of electricity has to be generated using a primary energy source such as fossil fuels, nuclear fission, or wind power to provide sufficient kinetic energy to drive an electricity generator. Thus, electricity is usually referred to as being a secondary energy source.

A couple of hundred years ago, the energy needs of the average household were met by primary energy devices such as kerosene lamps, coal fires, and cold stores.

Nowadays, electricity is so much a part of our daily life that we rarely think about what life would be like without it, except in the rare instance of a power cut. The reason for its ubiquity is that it is by far the most versatile and convenient energy source available, and can be used to power virtually any type of appliance, from a computer to a refrigerator.

Although there are now a number of high tech ways in which primary energy sources can be used to create electricity, such as the photovoltaic cell, the traditional method, which is still the most common, is to use a generator. A generator works on the principle, discovered by Michael Faraday in 1831, that electrical currents can be induced in a coil of wire when a magnet is turned inside it.

It was not until the far more powerful electromagnet came on the scene later in the 19th century that large scale electrical generation based upon this principle could become a workable reality.

The generators used in modern power stations utilise a huge electromagnet rotating inside a series of insulated coils, inducing a current in each one, which is then summed into a far larger current when those coils are joined at the end of the circuit.

These giant electromagnets are not going to rotate themselves, however, and require the energy for movement to come from a secondary source such as a steam turbine or a windmill. Typically, a power plant can achieve an energy efficiency of around 35%, meaning that only just over a third of the energy used to create the electricity is actually turned into electrical energy.

Although this may change in future, at the moment the vast majority of power stations use steam turbines, giant wheels propelled by jets of steam which are heated by burning gas, coal, or by the process of nuclear fission.

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.

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