If Perpetual Energy isn’t real, then how do Dams generate energy forever?
In: Engineering
False premise—they don’t.
Dams convert kinetic energy of moving water into electricity. The water moves because it had gravitational potential energy: at some point work was done (energy was expended) to lift that water up in elevation, thereby imparting it with gravitational potential energy. Dams are just cashing in on that previously done work that has caused the elevated water to now store potential energy. Once that water moves through the dams’ generators, it will be at a lower energy state, and won’t be usable again for extracting energy, unless something does work to move it up again.
That something is the meteorological processes on earth, the weather, which is itself powered by the sun.
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