Water and Electricity: Perfect Combination??

Hoover Dam

For any kid that has ever played Pokemon in their life, the combination of water and electricity is a no go. Everyone knows that electrical attacks are "Super Effective" against water pokemon, so why would anyone ever want to mix the two??

Hydroelectricity, that's why!! Hydroelectricity uses water to turn a turbine, which then generates electricity to be sent out through transmission and distribution lines to the consumer. As a student in electrical engineering, I had the pleasure of actually touring a Hydro plant up in Boulder, so I have a little more experience and knowledge in this area.

Most hydro plants, including the Boulder Hydro we toured, use gravity to generate the energy to turn the turbine. They transport water from a higher level down pipes using only gravity to build up energy. It then goes through a penstock, which gets narrower as it gets closer to the turbine, increasing the pressure of the water. The water is then forced through a needle valve, which makes the water into a high-powered stream. This stream is what is then used to turn the turbine. At the Boulder Hydro, they used a Pelton Wheel Turbine, which has these buckets all along it that are shaped like two concave ovals welded together, and they have a sharp ridge in the middle of them that splits the water from the needle.

ENERGY IN MOTION!!

Here is a video/song that I wrote and made entitled "Energy," and it is based off the smash single by Rebecca Black, "Friday." I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed writing and making it!!

I Hope This Brightens Your Day

After the earthquake in Japan and the crisis with the Fukushima Power Plant, I bet you thought I would talk about nuclear power in this post, but I decided to go a different route and talk about solar power. The article I found that prompted this week's post, actually talks about the Fukushima incident, but in respect as to how it affected solar energy.

If you have ever driven down 6th Avenue towards Denver, then you may have seen the photovoltaic cells, or solar panels, to your right, in front of the Federal Center. These panels convert the solar radiation from the sun shining on them into electrical current using semiconductors along their surface that exhibit the photovoltaic effect. This effect refers to the photons of light from the sun knocking electrons into a higher energy state, which creates the electrical current and, thus, electricity.

Since Fukushima, unease about nuclear energy has risen, resulting in an increased interest in solar and wind energy. Stocks in many solar companies have risen in the last few weeks, marking the added interest in the area, rising an average of 3.6% in the last week alone. Germany has also taken action to promote solar energy instead of nuclear, by planning on installing enough solar cells to generate 7.5 gigawatts in 2011. Also, they recently elected a Green party-led coalition over a Conservative party in one of their states as a result of anti-nuclear voters.

Hot Energy!!

I've been looking to write about geothermal energy for a while, but just haven't been able to find a good article to start it off, but today I found this article that I found pretty interesting. It is about Iceland's geothermal production, and how they plan to export the energy to mainland Europe. I knew that Iceland was a big user of geothermal energy, but I did not know that they used it to produce 81% of their electricity!!

Geothermal energy works by using the natural heat from Earth to heat water or another working fluid, and then the fluid is used to turn a turbine which turns a generator to produce electricity. It is not very efficient, only being at 10-25%, but as it uses heat from the Earth's core, it is a renewable source of energy, which makes it appealing. The figure to the left shows the basic dry steam plant, which takes geothermal steam directly to turn the turbines and produce electricity.

Currently, the United States is the world's largest producer of geothermal energy with a capacity of 3,086 MW per year, but it only accounts for 0.3% of the electricity produced in the U.S. Hopefully some of the money attributed to renewable energies in the budget, so that we can expand even more with geothermal energy.

More "Shocking" News

After last week's post on electric cars, I was looking at this one blog I've been following called Potential Energy, and it had a post about the money that the Obama administration has set aside for electric cars.

Obama wants to have one million "advanced technology vehicles" on the road by 2015, which includes hybrid vehicles as well as strictly electrical vehicles. To help achieve this number, the budget has allocated two billion dollars for factories to build batteries and other components for electric cars, as well as $300 million to make electric cars more appealing to the public and money to increase research and development for them. Rebates are also going to be offered for anyone that buys an electric car or hybrid for up to $7,500.

Do you think that this money is being budgeted appropriately? Is it worth appropriating this much money to electric vehicles?

Plug and Drive

So I've been following this blog called Potential Energy from Technology Review. It's kind of like this blog in that it talks about different types of energy, and lately they've had a lot of posts on electric cars, so I figured I'd jump on in and talk about them as well.

Electric cars seem to be the thing of the future, having a car you can plug in and then drive around town. Electric vehicles have batteries in them that get charged when you plug them in that power an electric motor in the car, allowing you to drive where you will up to a certain distance before you need to charge up again.

Electric vehicles have many benefits, including their electric motors have only 5 moving parts compared to the hundreds of moving parts in the typical internal combustion engine that most other cars have, providing easier maintenance. Also, the car, itself, does not have any tailpipe emissions like the combustion engine cars. They are also more efficient at converting stored energy to driving power than their counterparts.

Wind Power Video

Here is just a video I found that explains the basics of how power is generated from wind, enjoy!!