So we are getting a generator for any time the power gets knocked out and I was curious on how they actually work but I have a hard time understanding things so I was wondering if this sub would help me understand.
Edit: thank you all for the answer. I’m glad they helped me and I hope you all have a wonderful day.
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Depends on what kind. The gas/diesel ones are similar to a car, they simply burn fuel to rotate a crankshaft that spins a magnet which induces current in a coil. Some, although called “generators”, simply store energy in electrochemical batteries.
Picture the alternator in your car. But bigger and instead of it being an alternator it’s called a stator and it produces AC power from spining and turning friction into energy. Like a wind up flashlight only bigger
It’s usually a petrol or diesel motor, like in a car only much smaller, that instead of turning a gear box that makes a car move it will power something similar to an electric motor only as it turns it generates electricity rather then passing electricity through it to make it turn. Think like a water wheel. It spins as the water runs under it but say the water was still and you need it to move, you could move the wheel yourself and make the water under it move. A generator is like the last part
Do you know how old water mills work? A big, heavy wheel is placed in moving water, and is attached to a roller inside the mill. So the water turns the wheel, which causes the roller to turn as well. The roller would be grinding corn into flower, without a person having to do anything other than collect the flower and put more dried corn down to be ground.
Pretend a generator is a water mill, the gas is water, and the electricity generated is the ground flower. It’s just converting one form of energy into another. In the case of a generator, it’s burning gas to produce electrical power.
Pretty much, an electric motor takes electricity from the socket and uses it to turn. So you plug your blender in and it spins.
But, this works both ways. If there’s no power in your home, and you spin your blender by hand you can put some power back down the socket and into the wires.
So, if we take an engine, and use that to spin your blender motor on a bit bigger scale you can feed that power back into your house and run all your stuff when the power is out.
The end result of that is that the power station that produces power for the city is just a giant blender motor powered by a very big machine.
Magnets passing near coils of wire push elections in the wire. Its kind of like how magnets push against each other. Moving electrons is electricity.
If you rotate a magnet you can keep it moving constantly.
Generators use fuel like a motor to spin magnets near coils of wire.
It turns out that moving a magnet near a wire makes a little electricity move through the wire. You can get more electricity by winding the wire in a tight coil. Generators just use an engine to continually move magnets near coils of wire.
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