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What is a Power Station?
Power
stations convert a primary
energy resource
into electrical energy.
Electrical energy is called a secondary
energy source.
Electricity is a very useful
form of energy because
it can be used to do so many different
things
and it is easily transmitted
over long distances.
The primary energy
resources may be non-renewable,
for example fossil fuels
or nuclear
power,
or they may be renewable, for example
hydroelectric,
tidal,
wave, wind, solar, geothermal and
biomass.
What do Renewable and Non-renewable mean?
Renewable means that the resource can be replaced
in a reasonable amount of time
and therefore will not
run out.
Non-renewable means
that there is only a
certain amount of
the resource.
Once it is used up, it cannot be replaced.
How does a Power Station Work?
Fossil
fuels, nuclear power, geothermal
energy and biomass
are all used to boil water to make steam
which turns a turbine.
When natural gas is used as
the fossil fuel,
some power stations don't boil water to make steam
but directly use the hot burnt
gases
to turn a turbine.
A turbine has a number
of blades, like the blades of
a windmill,
which rotate when a liquid or
gas
(steam) is forced through it under
pressure.
Large cooling towers condense the steam
back into water
which is recycled, reheated and turned back into steam.
The rotating
turbine is connected to a generator
which produces alternating current
electricity.
A bigger generator producing more
electricity
uses more primary fuel per second.
This electricity is then put through a step
up transformer
and transmitted across the National
Grid.
Hydroelectric and
tidal
power use falling water to turn
the turbines. Wind power uses modern windmills
(called wind turbines) to turn small generators.
Solar
power generates electricity directly from sunlight.
or from the heating effect
of the Sun.
The following pages give the advantages
and
disadvantages of these
processes.
We can not rely on
just one way of generating
electricity. To make sure
that we have enough electricity all
the time we need it,
we must use a variety of ways to generate
electricity.
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