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Electricity Generation Explained
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.
Once safer, more powerful and more flexible electrical replacements for these devices came along, such as electric lights and fridges, these primary devices became a lot less popular, which created a huge demand for electricity generation.
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.
A modern electric generator typically consists of a large rotating electromagnet inside a tower made out of several distinct pieces of insulated wire. A current is induced in each separate coil of wire by the rotation of the electromagnet, which then comes together at the end of the circuit to form a much bigger current which is fed into the electricity network.
The moving part of an electric generator is usually turned by a device that runs on a primary energy source, such as a steam or wind turbine, an internal combustion engine, or a water wheel. The majority of electricity plants are around 35 percent efficient, in that the electrical energy produced by the plant is only just over a third of the total energy required to produce it.
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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