How does mechanical energy (primarily steam/wind powered turbine ) become electrical energy and vice versa.
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Answer: I’m not an expert, and I got a B in science, so don’t quote me.
The steam or wind turns a wheel or blades that, in turn, turn a magnet surrounded by copper wire. This makes electrons in the wire move, not sure exactly how, but that’s what electricity is (moving electrons). Then we ship it out for immediate use, or store it in batteries for later use.
Vice versa, if we make electricity turn a motor, and then we hook that motor to blades, we can make wind. We can also use electricity to heat water to make steam.
When an electrical conductor such as a wire is moved through a magnetic field it induces an electric current on that wire. Conversely, when an electric current flows through a conductor, it generates an magnetic field around that wire. These are fundamental principles of electromagnetism.
By using mechanical energy to rotate a coil of wire past a set of fixed magnets, we can generate electrical energy. This is an electric generator.
In a similar fashion, by changing electric current flowing through wires surrounded by fixed magnets, we can generate mechanical energy. This is an electric motor.
The stationary part of the generator is a set of coils, and inside is the rotor which has a magnetic field. The rotating magnetic field exposes the coils to a continually changing magnetic field with induces a voltage within them. When the coils are connected to an electrical power system, that voltage causes a current to flow and the generator is producing electricity. That current flow produces its own magnetic field which opposes the one that created it and creates drag on the rotor. The energy to overcome this drag and keep the rotor spinning is what the wind/steam/combustion gases are used for.
Imagine that you have a big wheel. You can spin this wheel to add energy to it. If you have a wheel thst spins, you can take energy from it. This is used in machines to store kinetic energy. It is even used to store energy as a battery by accelerating it with a motor, and the slowing it down with that motor and you get energy from it.
So from this we know that we know that we can turn energy in to movement and movement in to energy. Electricity is just a means to transfer energy.
We know that when electrons moves through a conductor it makes a magnetic field, and if we move a magnetic field through a conductor we can move electrons. Just like we can spin a wheel to add energy to it, we can take a wheel that spins and get energy from it.
Energy is just gradient of potential, whether it is movement, heat, electricity or pressure. We can heat a thing, and then have that later warm something that is cold. We can pump air to a tank and have that power something with flow of pressurised air. We can spin a wheel and slow a wheel down. And we can move electrons to get magnetic field and we can move a magnetic field to move electrons.
At the fundamental level all energy is movement. Heat is movement of atoms, electricity is movement of electricity, kinetic energy is movement of mass.
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