The top 5 innovations in the electric power industry have helped to provide cheaper electricity while causing less damage to the environment. Researchers continue to work on alternative methods of producing clean electricity, but let’s take a look at the top 5 innovations that have brought us thus far. We present three of these below; follow the link for the additional two top innovations.
Would you buy a home without functioning power outlets? We’ve come to depend on electric power for many of our day-to-day activities. When there are outages, we feel the impact of that dependency, followed by a sense of relief when the power’s back on again.
Electricity has helped us stay healthier, work more efficiently and live life around the clock. Because electricity has had such a positive influence on our lives, science and industry researchers are constantly finding ways to provide electric power more easily and inexpensively. As a result, innovations in electric power have made the industry cleaner and more efficient throughout its history, and made electric service available to millions of homes.
This article includes our top five picks from those innovations. We’ll look at technology targeted to certain energy resources, and we’ll check out the core components that give you access to those resources. To kick things off, let’s look a current innovation for a long-used renewable resource.
Wind Turbines
Today, around the world, the wind-electric turbine is becoming as iconic as the Dutch windmill. A wind turbine typically consists of a large, three-bladed propeller, called a rotor, atop a tower that’s high enough that nothing blocks it from the wind. The turbine has a drive train similar to a car’s engine that includes an electric generator. The electricity generated gets added to the electric grid, which powers hundreds of homes and businesses in a geographic location.
One small wind turbine can power a single home or small business. These smaller versions have rotors between 8 and 25 feet (2.4 and 7.6 meters) in diameter and can stand up to 30 feet (9.1 meters) in the air. Wind farms are becoming increasingly common in large open spaces. You can see some of these farms during a drive or flight through the Western United States, with thousands of giant white wind turbines stretching across hillsides as far as the eye can see.
Hydroelectric Dams
Hydroelectric dams work by holding back massive amounts of water and allowing a limited amount to flow through the dam. The water pressure created by limiting this flow is tremendous, and hydroelectric plants harness this pressure to turn turbines attached to electric generators. As with wind turbines, the electricity generated from a hydroelectric dam is added to the electric grid associated with the dam’s geographic location.
A hydroelectric dam supplies the electric grid with several hundred kilowatts to several thousand megawatts of electricity per second. The Unites States National Renewable Energy Laboratory states that the largest damns in the world can generate around 10,000 megawatts, enough for millions of people to use.
Solar Cells
Unlike the water and wind power technologies we’ve covered, solar cells are versatile in size and portability. Large solar panels with hundreds of cells can be built in a factory then sold to stretch out across land or mount on a rooftop. These large panels are used to power homes and businesses and must be replaced after about 30 years. Small solar panels with only a few cells gather enough energy to power standalone devices, like calculators and outdoor lighting.
Despite being a clean, renewable energy source, sunlight alone isn’t sufficient for those who want to use electricity at night or on cloudy days. In most cases, solar panels are a supplemental power source for a building that’s already attached to the electric grid. A few people, though, choose to go “off the grid” entirely and use rechargeable batteries to store solar-generated electricity when the sun’s not shining.
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The top 4 innovations in the electric power industry are helping to supply cheaper electricity in more environmentally-friendly ways. While we aren’t there yet, we anticipate these 5 innovations are just the beginning. Over the next 5 to 10 years, upcoming breakthroughs in electric technology will continue to make electricity less expensive to produce.
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