Heat Engines
Posted under Power Source
Over 90% of U.S. electricity is generated in power plants that convert heat into mechanical work. The heat may be the result of nuclear reactions, fossil-fuel combustion, or even concentrated sunlight focused onto a boiler.
Almost all of this 90% is based on a heat source boiling water to make steam that spins a turbine and generator, but there is a rapidly growing fraction that is generated using gas turbines. The best new fossil-fuel power plants use a combination of both steam turbines and gas turbines to generate electricity with very high efficiency.
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Electric Generators
Posted under Industry, Power Source
Electric generators are all based on the fundamental concepts of electromagnetic induction developed by Michael Faraday in 1831. Faraday discovered that moving a conductor through a magnetic field induces an electromagnetic force (emf), or
voltage, across the wire.
A generator, very simply, is an arrangement of components designed to cause relative motion between a magnetic field and the conductors in which the emf is to be induced. Those conductors, out of which flows electric power, form what is called the armature.
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Electric Industry Utility
Posted under Industry, Power Source
Electric utilities, monopoly franchises, large central power stations, and long transmission lines have been the principal components of the prevailing electric power paradigm since the days of Insull.
Electricity generated at central power stations is almost always three-phase, ac power at voltages that typically range from about 14 kV to 24 kV. At the site of generation, transformers step up the voltage to long-distance transmission-line levels, typically in the range of 138 kV to 765 kV. Those voltages may be reduced for regional distribution using subtransmission lines that carry voltages in the range of 34.5 kV to 138 kV.
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Electric Industy Pioneers
Posted under Industry, Power Source
The path that leads to today’s enormous electric utility industry began in earnest in the nineteenth century with the scientific descriptions of electricity and magnetism by giants such as Hans Christian Oersted, Andr´e Marie Amp`ere, and James Clerk Maxwell.
The development of electromechanical conversion technologies such as the direct-current dynamos developed in 1831 separately by Maxwell and H. Pixil of France, followed by Nicola Tesla’s work on alternating-current generation and distribution along with polyphase, brushless ac induction motors in the 1880s, made it possible to imagine using electricity as a viable and versatile new source of power.
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Three Phase Systems
Posted under Energy, Power Source
We often heard the word three phase systems, some of us might know that it related to power / electrical switching systems, but what really are three phase systems? Lets discussed it more further.
Firstly commercial electricity are tends to use and produce three phase synchronous generators, and it is also almost always sent on its way along three-phase transmission lines. There are at least two good reasons why three-phase circuits are
so common.
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