ELI5- why do we need to find different ways to generate electricity if the main thing is turning the turbine? Can’t people turn it manually?
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Turning a turbine does not generate electricity. A turbine is a device that harnesses the motion of a fluid (liquid or gas) and turns it into a rotational mechanical motion.
A water turbine uses the moment of water to rotate a shaft, a wind turbine use the moment of air, a gas turbine uses the exhaust gas from combustion, a steam turbine use steam.
The electricity is generated by a generator, the turbine is used to rotate the input shaft to the generator.
So humans can turn a generator but using a turbine is a bad way to do it, better is just directly push on coming like the pedals on a bike. The problem is the same as stated in other posts, the power of a human is quite low so it is impractical for most situations. It is used in some emergency radios and lights.
There is at least one relatively common nonemergency application, poser light in bicycles with a dynamo that one kind of generator. Today their dynamo-powered USB port to change phone when you ride a bike. That might not be a bad idea for long-distance bicycle trips, I talk about multiple-day backpacking trips. So generate electricity to power phones and other devices with similar power usage. It is not an economical way to generate electricity because the cost of the equipment will be more than ways grid power for phone charging will cost for a couple of decades. It is a way to change stuff when you are off the grin not to save money.
There is a way to generate electricity without a generator. The one way it can be done on the large scale at a reasonable cost is with solar panels. One other commonly used but not on that scale because of cost is non-rechagabe batteries.
There are some other ways like using a heat difference and a Peltier device. Devices exist for camping use with fire as a heat source. Some space probes and rovers use Radioisotope thermoelectric generators that use the radioactive decay for heat differential. This is an all cost and energy inefficient way to do but has niche use cases.
The bottom line is generators, not turbines generate electricity, turbines are just a good way to turn generators. Humans produce too little power to be relevant and there are other ways electricity is generated on the large scale in solar panels.
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