Engineering

More predictable renewable energy could lower costs

Lower electricity costs for consumers and more reliable clean energy could be some of the benefits of a new study by the University of Adelaide researchers who have examined how predictable solar or wind energy generation ...

Energy & Green Tech

Doing the math on a solar-powered future

Physicist Anders Carlsson, at Washington University in St. Louis, and Sid Redner of the Santa Fe Institute have created a new mathematical model to describe the most reliable, efficient and cost-effective way to harness solar ...

Energy & Green Tech

Tuning thermoelectric materials for efficient power generation

In times when energy is scarce and sustainable ways of energy production are being explored, thermoelectric materials are being considered for power generation to transform waste heat into electricity. However, to make this ...

Energy & Green Tech

The power of footfall: Harvesting energy from human traffic

For many years wind power, solar power, tidal power and many other sustainable solutions to electricity generation have been in place. But, what about harvesting the energy of human traffic on city streets and other environments?

Energy & Green Tech

Harvesting energy from moving trains

The Virginia Tech Center for Vehicle Systems and Safety (CVeSS) and the Railway Technologies Laboratory want to harness the energy created by moving trains and transform that energy into usable electricity.

Energy & Green Tech

Using machine learning to forecast amine emissions

Global warming is partly due to the vast amount of carbon dioxide that we release, mostly from power generation and industrial processes, such as making steel and cement. For a while now, chemical engineers have been exploring ...

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Electricity generation

Electricity generation is the process of creating electricity from other forms of energy.

The fundamental principles of electricity generation were discovered during the 1820's and early 1830's by the British scientist Michael Faraday. His basic method is still used today: electricity is generated by the movement of a loop of wire, or disc of copper between the poles of a magnet.

For electric utilities, it is the first process in the delivery of electricity to consumers. The other processes, electric power transmission, electricity distribution, and electrical power storage and recovery using pumped storage methods are normally carried out by the electrical power industry.

Electricity is most often generated at a power station by electromechanical generators, primarily driven by heat engines fueled by chemical combustion or nuclear fission but also by other means such as the kinetic energy of flowing water and wind. There are many other technologies that can be and are used to generate electricity such as solar photovoltaics and geothermal power.

This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA