Nuclear power appears to be a powerful way to make steam that spins a turbine. Same with geothermal, wind, & hydro. Maybe not solar? Isn’t energy lost in the multiple energy conversions (heat, water state, kinetic)? Is it theoretically possible to have a power source that more directly moves electrons through a circuit? If solar is the only one that can, it’s limited in efficiency and where it can be used. What about power generation undersea or on Ganymede or something?
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I’ve seen alot of good answers already explaining how we harvest energy in general, so I am only gonna touch up quickly on your titular question.
Electricity is porduced my moving electrones, so there has to be work that gets completed somewhere.
Its easiest to harvest directed forces such as mechanical forces. Heat isnt directed, so its really hard to harvest. So for us its easier to convert it first into a directed force.
In the case of photovoltaic (not to be confused with solar panels, which work by absorbing the suns heat into tiny tubes of water that run across the panel) we use chemical forces to generate power. Photovoltaic isnt the only place we do that though, for example alkine batteries also harvest chemical energies in order to produce electricity. Generally you’d think of a battery as something you need to charge up first. But in the case of alkine its metals that got mined from the ground, that dont get charged up or anything, that produce the electricity. Or potato batteries work the same way. Even batteries that you do have to charge up first, use chemical forces, to release the stored energy again (usually, cause you could also think of a dam as a giant battery for potential energy, but thats not what I mean here).
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