Hobbies And Interests
Power Generation Background
To make electricity, a power plant must rotate a magnet within a coil of wire. This action produces electricity in the wire. The magnet is usually attached to a turbine, and the turbine rotates when force is applied to it, depending on the type of plant. For example, wind power uses spinning windmills connected to turbines to produce power. All power generation relies on obtaining the energy needed to turn the turbine.
Hydropower
Hydroelectric power plants take the form of dams placed on rivers. The dam alters the river's flow, causing a lake to form behind the dam that has a higher water level than the river downstream. When water passes through the dam, falling down pipes from the lake to the level of the river, it flows through a turbine, causing it to spin and generate electricity. Hydroelectric plants don't rely on fossil fuels for power, but their alteration of river flows can disrupt wildlife and habitats in and around the river. In the United States, 2.8 percent of the energy consumed in 2012 came from hydroelectric power.
Solar Power
There are several types of solar power generators, but all of them make use of the heat energy of sunlight. Concentrated solar power generators use arrays of mirrors to concentrate a large area's worth of sunlight onto a relatively small container, which holds a fluid. The fluid, when heated, turns a turbine. Photovoltaic solar power uses photovoltaic solar cells that act as small generators when sunlight strikes them. Solar power generation usually requires a large amount of land to capture enough solar energy, so that land can no longer be used for anything else, like carbon sequestration. Solar power generation supplied only 0.22 percent of American energy consumption in 2012.
Solar Vs. Hydro
Although both solar and hydroelectric power use renewable energy sources to produce their electricity, they share the problems of unpopularity and environmental side-effects. Hydroelectric power can create lakes, depending on the dam, and usually affects the migration and habitat of river life. Solar power depends on using up a lot of land, and furthermore, due to poor energy storage technology, it is difficult to make use of solar energy during night or times of cloud cover, necessitating the use of fossil fuel-based backup plants to take up the slack. On the other hand, hydroelectric power must be built on a water source of sufficient size, while solar power needs only open space that gets a lot of sunlight. Hydropower produces energy more efficiently where the location is suitable, but solar power is more versatile in terms of potential building sites.