Monday, October 22, 2012

Hydropower Plants

As people discovered centuries ago, the flow of water represents a huge supply of kinetic energy that can be put to work. Water wheels are useful for generating motion energy to grind grain or saw wood, but they are not practical for generating electricity. Water wheels are too bulky and slow.
Hydroelectric plants are different. They use modern turbine generators to produce electricity, just as thermal (coal, natural gas, nuclear) power plants do, except they do not produce heat to spin the turbines.

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