Ever wonder how much electricity we consume every single day? Well, the average American household uses up to 11,700 kWh, talk about shocking.
According to statistics 80% of the world’s population has access to electricity. It had increased since the last decade due to urbanization. Despite the fact that the number of people that are using electricity increases every minute, we have different amounts of usage. Like some Asian homes differ from the usage of a common American household.
A graph provided by the World Energy Council , shows the different usage of electricity by different countries. As seen from the graph, more urbanized countries like Canada and United States, consume electricity ten times of that to less urban areas such as Nigeria.
The total average of the consumption of the different countries sums up to 3,500 kWh in the year 2010.
It continues to rise as the population increases; the demand in supply also increases. Asian countries take the lead with a whopping average of 26,000 tWh (terawatt hours). That’s the equivalent of 600,000,000 tons of oil to supply it with. So how do we generate more electricity to keep up with the demands of the people?
“Energy can neither be created nor destroyed ”.
-Julius Robert Mayer
The conservation of energy is an absolute law that tells us we can’t just pick up a stick and shoot electricity out of it like a wizard, no it states that naturally we can’t create energy, but we can transform or transfer it from one form to another.
It is in everything that we day to day, cars running on gas, lighting up a stick, charging your phone and just turning on the lights. We are turning one form of energy to another and this how mankind generates electricity, but how exactly?
Since the discovery of electricity , surely we need loads and loads of amounts of electricity due to the increasing global population. Moreover, the rate of industrialization is on the rise in progressive countries having the demand for electricity seems to be increasing endlessly.
“There is no energy crisis , but a crisis of ignorance .”
-R. Buckminister Fuller
A concern that the world is afraid of is a worldwide energy crisis. As we feast more on the limited supply of natural resources that we have, the faster we deplete it. This does not seem impossible as the demand skyrockets every year. Industries and facilities thrive on electricity to keep the economy going and these industries require much more power than the millions of household within a nation. Most of our energy comes from fossil fuels that are extracted from deep into the Earth. Each country is rich in a selective group of resources that are being traded to keep the demand of electricity in balance.
Source: Enerdata via World Energy Council
Sources of Electricity
So the race for the next energy source to be transformed into electrical energy is on. Mankind is thinking of ways on how to produce enough electrical energy for the world’s consumption with all the resources that he is left with. Here are 11 sources of energy that we use to generate electricity.
SOLAR
Solar energy is a good source of power, for in the daytime it is abundant and it is almost everywhere. Solar cells are used to convert solar energy to electricity.
If sunlight is directly hitting a solar cell, the semiconductors absorb a portion of that light. When the energy from the absorbed light strikes electrons, the electrons get excited and begin to stray away from parent atoms. These free flowing electrons travel through a circuit and electrical energy is ready to be used.
Companies are experimenting with this technology in order to produce innovative creations that depend on sunlight rather than crude or oil.
WIND
Not to be confused, but wind is a form of solar energy. This is due to the uneven surfaces of the Earth and its rotation. The will cause the sun to unevenly heat up our atmosphere. The wind also changes direction, speed, etc. by the terrain.
We use the flow of the wind to transform it into kinetic energy and to generate electricity. The energy in motion can be converted to mechanical power, the best example of this is with the use of turbines (e.g. windmills)
A wind turbine works by using the flow of the wind to turn huge blades that are connected to a shaft that is also connected to a generator. As the shaft spins while the blades turn, the generator converts that kinetic energy to generate electricity.
BIOMASS
Biomass energy is a form of renewable energy source that can be made from organic material such as trees, farm crops, manure, plants and landfill gas. They require dedicated machinery for extraction the essence pf these organic materials to make Biofuels. Biofuels are flammable substances much similar to fossil fuels, they burn when ignited, releasing an energy that can be converted to motion, or in our case, power up a generator to produce electricity.
HYDROELECTRICITY
Water is the most abundant resource available on Earth. It is recorded that 71% of the Earth’s surface is covered in water and can also be used to generate electricity. Nowadays it is the leading renewable energy source used by power companies to supply the demand of electricity within their areas.
Using water flowing water creates energy that can be captured and transformed into electricity. The most common type of hydroelectric power plant is with the use of a dam to store water in a reservoir. Water is released from the reservoir which flows through a turbine. The flow of the water allows the shaft of the turbine to spin that is connected to a generator to produce mechanical power. This activates the generator to produce electricity.
WAVE
Another aspect of water is utilizing its waves as a source of mechanical power or kinetic energy. I see this being applied to marine vessels, as ships moves along the waves of oceans and seas, turbines are attached to both sides of the ships that turns every time a wave hits it.
One of the benefits is that no waste is produced. It is also more dependable than many other forms of alternative energy sources and has a great potential in powering our vessels for transportation to avoid using oil when venturing the seas.
TIDAL
Again water proves to be the main contributor of alternative energy. Tidal is another form to generate energy, even though it is much alike with hydroelectric method, it is more similar to the methods of how wind generated electricity.
Tidal Stream Generators are the known form of technology that utilizes the pressure of tidal movements to generate electricity.
NATURAL GAS
Natural gas consists of large amounts of methane and hydrocarbons that can be found underground, and these materials are turned into fuel. Natural gas is much more similar to the components of biomass that produces biofuel, but natural gas comes in the form of fossil fuels. This is the energy source that became the choice of big infrastructures and the fuel for cars. It has also become the choice for power plants as an alternative source.
The hot gases produced by burning natural gas are used to create steam for combustion engines and turbines to utilize it. This source of renewable energy is the usually used for high demand energy consumption as it can be transferred quite easily.
COAL
Coal is a form of fossil fuel that is the altered remains of prehistoric vegetation that had decayed for millions of years. Coal creates more than half the electricity consumed by Americans. One quarter of the world’s coal reserves are located in the United States. The energy produced by coal, is much more than the recoverable oil that we know today.
The energy that we get from coal today originates from the energy that plants consumed from the sun a long time ago. As plants undergo photosynthesis, they store solar energy. To the point when the plants die, the energy is released as the plants start to decay. When conditions are favorable to the coal formation, the decaying process is disturbed, preventing the discharge of the stored solar energy, hence locking it to the coal.
NUCLEAR
Nuclear power is the most relied upon alternative source of energy, but due to its highly radioactive emissions and catastrophic disasters, only 13 countries implemented it. It creates a handful of benefits in terms of efficiency and boosting the economy
A nuclear power plant operates and generates electricity pretty much the same way as a fossil fuel plant with a different source of heat, nuclear fission (the splitting of uranium atoms). The heat is used to boil water to produce steam, which spins the turbines of a generator that relies on thermal energy to convert it into electricity. Keep in mind, that one wrong and you have the whole nation is in danger, better keep an eye on these Nuclear power plants.
GEOTHERMAL
Most of the power plants today require steam to generate electricity. The steam turn the blades of a turbine that produces kinetic energy, that is require by a generator to generate electricity. Most power plants use fossil fuels to boil water for steam, but geothermal power plants utilizes the steam from reservoirs of hot water miles below the Earth’s surface.
HYDROGEN
Hydrogen is actually an energy carrier, but hydrogen in general can create power. It is in the use of a fuel cell, the hydrogen and oxygen atoms are converted into water (H2O) and we all know that water has many uses in the alternative energy area.
Due to just combining hydrogen and oxygen to form water, it can’t much play a bigger energy role. Hydrogen can also be used to produce massive explosions, maybe one day we can utilize this energy and try to replace it as an alternative to gasoline.