It’s been more than 200 years since the widespread implementation of the steam engine.
Why is this still the most prevalent means of producing electricity? With things like fusion reactors, why is it so hard to convert the thermal energy into electrical energy?
In: 787
It is efficient, cheap and easy to scale.
For generating power your options are:
1. __Steam turbine, 30-40% efficient__. Used by coal/fossil fuels, nuclear, concentrated solar power, geothermal, etc.
2. __Combined cycle, 60% efficient__. This works for natural gas has 2 turbines one is NG burning the second is a steam turbine using the heat from the NG turbine so you get about double the efficiency. This is part of why NG is cleaner than coal (but still not very clean). Its generally more expensive to build and more complex though.
3. __Diesel generator, 30-40% efficient__. But also much more maintenance, costs more to build, needs specific fuel, can be very expensive at electric grid scale.
4. __Thermocouple, 5-10% efficient__. These are both expensive and inefficient. They produce electricity when heat is transferred through them via the [thermoelectric effect](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermoelectric_effect). They are mainly used by NASA to power rovers and probes with the heat of nuclear decay (on the hot side and cold space/mars on the cold side).
5. __Solar PV, ~20% efficient__, but very cheap and who cares it’s not like we are wasting sunlight.
So for fusion 2 and 3 are not options, 5 would be vaporized instantly, leaving steam and thermocouple. I’d take cheap and efficient steam turbine over a thermocouple any day.
Also, Hydroelectric is ~90% efficient which is awesome for pumped hydro grid storage.
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