Electrical power generation is something that is now considered a necessity for modern life, and it's no small wonder. Most of our modern convenience, and some things that have become necessary, rely on electricity to function at all. Your phone, the television, and hospital systems all require electrical current to make them function. But how is most of that electricity generated? And how much does it contribute to environmental impact, considering that many view it as a way to reduce pollution as an alternative to personal use of fossil fuels?
Let's take it from the top: most power plants rely on steam generation to power the turbines that turn the generator. Hydroelectric is an exception that still relies on water turning a turbine, only with pressure from sheer volume instead of heated water. Most power plants need to heat water to the point that it becomes high pressure steam, capable of turning a turbine fast enough to generate electricity that can be sent out to the grid. Nuclear plants do this with nuclear fission chain reactions, which create a lot of dangerous radioactive waste that is currently unusable for power generation, since there isn't a known way to use radioactive decay as an energy source. There are actually two types of solar power plants, one that heats water by focusing solar energy, and another that is independent of water in the cycle due to use of photovoltaic materials.
The most common type of power plant is the thermal plant, which burns fuel to boil water. Most of these rely on fossil fuels to act as the combustible material, though alternatives are being made that are capable of using biofuels and biomass to provide the heat energy. One alternative in particular that has me excited for this idea is the idea that waste streams could be used to supply the fuel for such plants. If we can use waste to produce energy, it would solve more problems than just the meeting of fuel demands, since the waste is no longer being just dumped in a landfill. And since this line isn't limited to a particular type of fuel, it would be possible to use, say, the stalks of corn that could be used for food instead of the corn kernels themselves. There is already at least one company, Bluefire Ethanol, that has started work on this type of energy stream. They are even able to harvest methane from the decomposing elements in the waste to increase their energy capacity, while simultaneously decreasing the amount that gets released into the atmosphere. There are so many reasons to do this, and it seems so logically sensible, that I am actually rather surprised that there aren't already more such plants, since burning garbage has also been a traditional means of getting rid of it. There are also companies that take in bio-waste from farms, like manure, to burn for energy production, providing another way to take advantage of waste that can accumulate quickly to get something productive from it.
Another type of water-based energy production is geothermal energy, which uses water from underground that has been heated by the fact that it is deeper and under more pressure than at the surface. Due to the pressure conditions, water can often be found at temperatures much higher than the boiling temperature of water at sea level, meaning that no heating is required to generate the steam to turn the turbines. There seem to be a few types of this type of energy production, and from the looks of it, plants that use water that has already been heated inject the water back into the well it was taken from to make the process sustainable, instead of having an underground source of heated water run dry and make the plant useless.
Another popular alternative to these types of power production is wind power, which is perhaps the simplest of all these systems (barring complexities in turbine design) in that it requires nothing more than a good, windy spot to turn the power generator. While I can't say much as to the difficulty of establishing a wind farm (with the exception of the Cape Wind project I covered in a previous post), the simplicity of a pretty much independently operating system for energy generation has a nice appeal for me. No constant input of a dangerous, expensive, or limited resource- just the necessary mechanisms, and a good spot for them to work in.
There may be a few other types of power generation that have escaped my notice, these are the systems most common or likely to become common in the future. Some have distinct advantages over the others, and ultimately, the type of plant that gets installed at a location should be based on what type of resources are most abundantly available in the area- for example, geothermal is most common in the area of Yellowstone Park, due to the large magma chamber under the park that is also responsible for the numerous geysers and hot springs of the region. We have a number of better alternatives to move away from fossil fuel use in the generation of electricity, and when one is found that is well suited for a region, I hope that those who live in the area will try and make the switch as soon as possible.
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