Electricity Generation Explained

By Author: Dave Sabri
Total Articles: 29
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Although humans have been aware of electricity in one form or another for thousands of years, it has only been in the last two hundred that we have been able to harness it safely and generate a steady current of it for use in 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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