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I always find it slightly amusing how there's remarkably few forms of power generation that don't eventually boil down to "use water/air/steam to make a turbine
by pdpi 4y ago
I always find it slightly amusing how there's remarkably few forms of power generation that don't eventually boil down to "use water/air/steam to make a turbine spin".
- gridspy 4y agoIt is amusing. But it's just because that is the most efficient way we know to turn heat into electricity at scale.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- amelius 4y agoAnd also because it is easy to turn most types of energy into heat.
- JadeNB 4y ago> It is amusing. But it's just because that is the most efficient way we know to turn heat into electricity at scale. Despite the 'but', I don't think you are disagreeing with your parent (who I took to be saying that they found it slightly amusing that we haven't discovered any more efficient ways to turn heat into electricity). If you meant that steam turning a turbine is the most efficient way that we know to turn heat into electricity, then it seems that you're saying the same thing as your parent, and it's not clear what 'just' adds. If you meant that it's the most efficient way that exists, then, first, I wonder how you know; and, second, I think that far from this being 'just' anything, it's pretty remarkable that we stumbled on the literally most efficient possible way so early in our history of working with electricity!
- ncmncm 4y agoIf you read what he wrote, your question is answered already. Saying the best way we know is the best way we know is vacuous. Nothing about steam is especially good except that water is cheap. It was cheap before, and still is. Its problems are problems we have learned to live with. But it costs more than wind or solar, even with free heat. So it is a dead end.
- JadeNB 4y ago> If you read what he wrote, your question is answered already. You are right; I missed "that we know". That is entirely my mistake. But then it seems to make gridspy's comment rather content-less. If someone says "I always find it slightly amusing how there's remarkably few forms of power generation that don't eventually boil down to "use water/air/steam to make a turbine spin".", then what does saying "it's just because that is the most efficient way we know" contribute? The 'because' suggests some justification, but it appears just to be re-stating what it's justifying. A re-statement can be valuable, but combining it with 'just' seems to be dismissing an observation that I, at least, found interesting enough not to dismiss, even if it is 'just' a description of existing facts.
- gridspy 4y agoI find some merit in your argument. I feel like the GP said "We use lots of turbines, isn't that interesting" and I said "It's nice to see the common factor here is a translation of pressure -> electricity" or "temperature -> energy." So what I thought I was contributing here was an explanation of why we like steam and turbines so much. I'm pretty sure that steam, turbines, etc have a big efficiency loss. Like you guessed, I meant "the best way we know of to do it at industrial scale now."
- JadeNB 4y agoThank you for your constructive engagement with my question! As ncmncm pointed out, you clearly said that you were referring to the best way currently known, and it was my fault for simply misreading.
- Ekaros 4y agoAlso the range of scale is quite amazing. From single small wind turbine to massive ones to close 2GW...
- christophilus 4y ago> boil down I see what you did there. I feel the same way, though. It feels primitive. But it’s what we’ve got!
- JohnFen 4y agoYes, or as I like to think of it -- we're more of a steam-powered society now than we were during the "steam age".
- cm2187 4y agoTurbines and piston engines also rely on the mechanical power of gas expanding.
- amelius 4y agophotovoltaics is entirely solid-state.
- earthscienceman 4y agoAnd very inefficient as a result, funny enough.
- snovv_crash 4y agoYou can get multiband sonlar panels with efficiency in the low 40% range. This is similar to coal, nuclear etc.
- waynesonfire 4y agowas curious about mirrors, which are used to boil water, "most concentrated solar power technologies will have an efficiency somewhere between 7 and 25 percent." "Though most commercial panels have efficiencies from 15% to 20%, researchers have developed PV cells with efficiencies approaching 50%." "Both nuclear and coal plants show a range of efficiencies. Nuclear plants currently being built have about 34-36% thermal efficiency, while one of the new reactor designs boasts 39%. In comparison, new coal-fired plants approach 40% and CCGT plants reach 60%."
- kadoban 4y agoThese comparisons seem basically meaningless though. What does it tell us that coal is "40%" vs solar being "20%"? Why does that number matter?
- tuatoru 4y agoCoal is "40%", less the energy used in mining and transporting the coal, less the energy used in coping disposing of the ash and coping with the environmental and health harms arising from burning coal. For PV, a higher "efficiency" means less land is used for a given nameplate power output. Desert land is not in noticeably short supply, though. Or it might mean that PV is economically feasible in high-latitude or chronically cloudy areas.
- cush 4y agoAliens are looking down on us right now thinking, "we'll make contact as soon as they advance past the steam engine"
- mc32 4y agoIf it were only that easy to keep them from invading earth!
- kidme5 4y agoIf aliens have the capacity to interact with us, they've probably been doing it for a long time. We're their pet project, why would they invade?
- mrcartmeneses 4y ago“Mostly harmless”
- mc32 4y agoThe cosmos is not startrek -one doesn’t travel vast multigenerational distances in space and time to “just observe”. If we could travel to an extra-solar habitable planet. Do you think we’d be like, huh, nice carbon based life, just like us. Awesome now let’s go back “home”. Or if we let off some earth mammals the beasts would be like, you know what, humans, take me and my descendants ten/a thousand generations down back to earth.
- JadeNB 4y ago> The cosmos is not startrek -one doesn’t travel vast multigenerational distances in space and time to “just observe”. If we could travel to an extra-solar habitable planet. Do you think we’d be like, huh, nice carbon based life, just like us. Awesome now let’s go back “home”. This sounds awfully knowledgeable about travel over multi-generational distances when neither you, nor I, nor any other human has ever done it. Maybe you're right that it's not what we would do, but how can you, I, or any human possibly know whether it's what an alien species would do?
- dopidopHN 4y agoReal question, not réthorical. Do we have any other way ? I can’t think of any. Edit : solar don’t involve having a Dynamo spinning.
- Retric 4y agoThe big ones are just PV or batteries, but there are a few more niche methods like thermocouples, piezoelectricity, or fuel cells.
- JadeNB 4y ago> réthorical Since I can't imagine any easy way to have produced that as a typo, you may like to know that the spelling is actually 'rhetorical' (no accent in English, despite 'rhétorique' in French).
- dopidopHN 4y agoMy phone autocomplete learned French on his own. It’s a « us » phone born and raise in the US. But I fed him so much French that he is unsure about things. I let it happen. Accent are fun.
- infogulch 4y agoYep. Besides the common exception of photovoltaics, the only other method I'm aware of is "Direct energy conversion" which generates electricity by catching fast moving charged ions. But this only works with select fusion fuels / reactions such as protium–boron-11.
- rainbowzootsuit 4y agoThermoelectric generation in a RTG (radioisotope thermoelectric generator) on space probes like Voyager or Cassini are another. https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/missions/cassini/radioisotope-thermoelectric-generator/ https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/missions/cassini/radioisotope-t... You can also do hobby-level usage like charging a cell phone with a candle. https://www.instructables.com/Thermoelectric-USB-charger/ https://www.instructables.com/Thermoelectric-USB-charger/
- robotresearcher 4y agoIf it ain't broke....
- Projectiboga 4y agoHere is B11+H fusion that generates electricity directly w charged particles emission. https://www.climateleadership.com.au/single-post/2020/02/21/Hydrogen-boron-fusion-technology-promises-clean-energy-breakthrough https://www.climateleadership.com.au/single-post/2020/02/21/...