• @halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world
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    281 month ago

    Nearly all power generation comes down to boiling water to steam which spins a turbine.

    I can only think of two common exceptions off the top of my head. Solar is an exception and Hydro power is an exception ironically, that usually uses the vertical difference and gravity to spin the turbine.

    • @TranscendentalEmpire@lemm.ee
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      121 month ago

      Yeah, who would have guessed that modernity was invented by someone who stuck magnets to a fidget spinner and strapped it to a boiler.

    • @subtext@lemmy.world
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      51 month ago

      One could even argue that hydro power is just boiling water, letting it condense, and then letting it spin a turbine

      • @halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world
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        21 month ago

        I’ve never heard of Hydro power boiling water. Usually hydro power is natural or pumped storage.

        You’re just taking water from an upper reservoir and dropping it to a downstream river. Either a naturally-filled reservoir/lake, or a pumped storage reservoir where you use other cheap power during low usage periods to pump that water to a higher reservoir to utilize later. The pump doesn’t heat the water, it just moves it uphill to utilize later, like the Taum Sauk Hydroelectric Power Station in Missouri.

        • @hunter@sh.itjust.works
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          61 month ago

          They were speaking of the water cycle. It’s the naturally-filled part. Not necessarily boiled, but evaporated.

        • @subtext@lemmy.world
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          31 month ago

          I know that… I was taking liberties to take hydroelectric power to its furthest logical extension by saying that the sun is evaporating (boiling) the water, it goes through the water cycle, it is deposited atop mountains or further upriver, and it then flows back down through the hydroelectric stations.

      • @I_Has_A_Hat@lemmy.world
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        21 month ago

        Oh yea! I forgot about that one! It’s starting to be used a lot in implantable medical devices to generate a small current. There was also that thing a few years back that was trying to use it to generate power from waves/tides; not sure if that actually got past the proof-of-concept stage though.