3 ms·
The answer in almost all electrical production boils down to spinning a turbine with steam (or wind). Nuclear does it, all the fossil fuels do it and ultimately
by PaulKeeble 11mo ago
The answer in almost all electrical production boils down to spinning a turbine with steam (or wind). Nuclear does it, all the fossil fuels do it and ultimately heat batteries do it too. The alternative is photovoltaic or directly nuclear to electron production and then storage with chemical batteries or massive capacitors.
Most of our electrical production is based on a solution found several hundred years ago, we just made it really big and worked out how to control the heating and pressure of the steam well.
- chii 11mo agoYou missed thermoelectric generators that uses the Seebeck effect to generate a current between two temperature differentials. It's terribly inefficient, unfortunately.
- baq 11mo agoNon-steam turbines have been operated (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_vapour_turbine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_vapour_turbine), but… steam is just so much easier to work with.
- mathw 11mo agoCome on, mercury vapour sounds like sooooo much fun! Where's your sense of adventure? /s