Electricity production or generation is the process of converting various types of energy into electrical energy at industrial facilities called power plants. Currently, the following types of generation exist:
Thermal power industry: In this case, the thermal energy of the combustion of organic fuels is converted into electrical energy. Thermal power industry includes thermal power plants (TPPs), which are of two main types. Using the Pulse Power is perfect now.
Condensation IES, the old abbreviation GRES is also used. Condensation is called non-combined generation of electrical energy.
Cogeneration plants, CHP. Cogeneration is the combined generation of electrical and thermal energy at the same station.
IES and TPPs have similar technological processes. In both cases, there is a boiler in which fuel is burned and steam is heated under pressure due to the generated heat. Next, the heated steam is fed into a steam turbine, where its thermal energy is converted into rotational energy. The turbine shaft rotates the rotor of the generator thus the rotation energy is converted into electrical energy, which is supplied to the network. The principal difference between the CHPP and the IES is that part of the steam heated in the boiler goes to heat supply needs.
Nuclear power: It includes nuclear power plants NPPs. In practice, nuclear power is often considered a subspecies of the thermal power industry, since in general the principle of generating electricity at nuclear power plants is the same as at thermal power plants. Only in this case, thermal energy is released not during the burning of fuel, but during the fission of atomic nuclei in a nuclear reactor. Further, the scheme for generating electricity is fundamentally no different from thermal power plants: steam is heated in the reactor, enters the steam turbine, etc. Due to some design features of nuclear power plants it is unprofitable to use in combined generation, although separate experiments in this direction were carried out.
Hydropower: It includes hydroelectric power plants (HPS). In hydropower, the kinetic energy of the flow of water is converted into electrical energy. To do this, with the help of dams on the rivers, a difference in the levels of the water surface the so-called upper and lower pools are artificially created. Water, under the action of gravity, overflows from the upstream to the downstream through special channels in which water turbines are located, the blades of which are untwisted by the water flow. The turbine rotates the rotor of the electric generator. A special type of hydroelectric station is the pumped storage stations (PSP). They cannot be considered generating capacities in their pure form, since they consume almost the same amount of electricity as they produce. However, such stations cope very effectively with unloading the network at peak hours.
Alternative energy: It includes methods for generating electricity, which have a number of advantages in comparison with traditional ones, but for various reasons which have not received sufficient distribution. The main types of alternative energy are:
- Wind energy: the use of kinetic wind energy to generate electricity
- Solar energy: obtaining electric energy from the energy of sunlight
The common disadvantages of wind and solar energy are the relative low power of generators at their high cost. Also, in both cases, storage capacities for nighttime for solar energy and windless for wind energy time are required.
Geothermal energy: the use of the Earth’s natural heat to generate electrical energy. In fact, geothermal stations are ordinary thermal power plants where the source of heat for heating steam is not a boiler or a nuclear reactor, but underground sources of natural heat. The disadvantage of such stations is the geographical limitations of their application: it is cost-effective to build geothermal stations only in regions of tectonic activity, that is, where natural sources of heat are most available.