Are there other methods(Not solar panels) to do it that doesn’t need a spinning turbine at all?
In: Technology
I see none of the comments mentioning how it’s actually extremely convenient to generate electricity using electric motors. In layman’s terms, you can more or less directly pipe an electric generator’s output into a high voltage transformer and down the transmission line it goes to the receivers.
This is because due to the mechanics involved and the laws of induction, a motor will reliably generate natural sine wave in phase AC at the right frequency you need, which is exactly what we use for most transmission lines, so all you have to do is convert the voltage to a higher one.
By contrast, for solar power for example, you need an inverter to turn the DC current you receive from the panels into AC. This means expensive and complex electronics and filters for getting out the right frequency and phase to feed into a transformer for distribution. Not to mention how you need to be very careful with its design and even the best inverter will introduce *some* amount of harmonics and even deforming power into the network.
Generating AC with motors is so effective, in fact, that there’s a type of DC to AC converter that’s actually just 2 motors. One motor that’s powered by DC to spin an AC generator that then sends your converted AC power. The power lost in the kinetic rotation and motor magnetic field losses is compensated by the quality of the AC signal at the output and the ease of using it in the application. The only restriction for this is the size of the device, so naturally inverters usually beat it out.
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