Activity 1. How Electricity Is Generated & Transmitted

How electricity is generated and transmitted?

There various ways to generate electricity now, but all of them use a similar principle of converting some kind of fuel into heat energy, then to mechanical energy and at last to electrical energy. Sometimes we don’t need heat and instead we use kinetic energy. For example : Wind powered plant and Hydro-Electric powered plant. In every scheme to generate electricity, turbine is the main machinery to produce any amount of electricity. In every single scheme, there are various ways to produce heat and the function of that heat is to activate the turbine. Heat is converted into mechanical energy in this process. After a turbine spins, it will then convert mechanical energy into electrical energy. The result of a turning turbine is, to be exact, electrons. Then, electrons will be transmitted through wires. Starting from here transmission process will start.

Ways of producing heat to turn a turbine :

• Pressurized steam:

Produced by burning coal, is used in coal plants. There are also fossil fuel plants, they use the same principle which is the pressurized steam principle.

• Hydro Electric Power:

            As the name implies, it is electricity produced by the flow of water. Usually power plants powered by hydro-electric power is situated where they can take advantage of the greatest fall of water (from the reservoirs). The water will go through the turbine, turning it producing electricity.

• Nuclear Power:

            Here the fuel used to create heat is an element called Uranium. The element produces an intense heat in a process called the nuclear fission. That heat will travel through a heat exchanger, heating water contained in the boiler converting it into steam to turn a steam turbine.

• Wind Power:

            We harness the kinetic energy of wind to turn a large wind-powered turbine. Usually it has three bladed rotor rotating. It has been quite popular lately, although still provides less than one percent of global energy consumption.

• Solar energy:

            Obviously here we are using the power of the sun. The problem is although the energy of the sun is free, the cost of machinery to convert the sun’s energy has been relatively high and its efficiency is not that satisfying.

The transmission looks complex, but it can simplified. So, the voltage produced by the plant will be “stepped up” by passing it through a step-up transformer. Then, the “stepped up” voltage will be transported through a high-voltage transmission lines. It will flow to a substation nearest to our location/home where it will be “stepped down” to a level safe to our home. The “stepped down” voltage will be distributed by distributions lines. The voltage the will be “stepped down” again by a distribution transformer and finally the electricity will reach the building or the house. Electricity travels through wires that are inside the walls to the outlets and switches installed in the building.