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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No, that’d be too much effort for humans. We use far more electric power than we can generate using our bodies.
>In 2020, the average annual electricity consumption for a U.S. residential utility customer was 10,715 kilowatt–hours (kWh)
https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=97
10,715 kWh ÷ 365.25 days/year = 29.3 kWh of electricity per household per day.
>Over an 8-hour work shift, an average, healthy, well-fed and motivated manual laborer may sustain an output of around 75 watts of power.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_power#Available_power
75 Watts * 8 hours = 600 Wh, or 0.6 kWh. That’s only 1/50^th of the electricity an average household uses in a day.
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