In engineering exploration, we have a research project about sustainable energy. We had to choose from wind power, solar power, hydropower, geothermal power, and biomass power. The group I am working with decided to choose hydropower. Hydropower is using the movement of water to create an electric current. We met Thursday to start the research and to figure out what we needed to do. We found resources for the research and we started looking over the material. As I was looking over the information I began to get excited about the project. The process of converting kinetic energy into an electric current is fascinating to me. It is not a very difficult process to understand, but there is just something about it that is intriguing. We decide to meet back up Sunday night and finish the research, and as we are looking up it began to appeal to me even more.
For hydropower to work, obviously there needs to be moving water. There also has to be a turbine and a generator. There are three different types of hydroelectric power plants. They are dams, pump storage, and tidal plants. Each plant uses a different technique, but all of the plants are doing the same basic principles. All the plants have water passing a turbine propeller which causes it to spin. A shaft is connected to the turbine and rotates when the propeller rotates. The shaft is connected to the generator shaft which has electromagnets attached to it. In a generator there is a conductor, which is usually copper wiring, and there is the shaft that has magnets connected to it. As the magnets spin passing the copper wiring it creates an electric current and to use that current power lines are connected to the generator to put the current on the power grid. That is what all the plants have in common, but what they do not have in common is how they get the turbine to spin.
Dams use falling water to spin the turbine. A dam can be built across a river and the flowing water will go into the penstock, which is tunnel in the dam that is at an angle to get the water to flow faster. At the bottom of the penstock is the turbine which makes the rotate the shaft which starts the process I described earlier. Pump storage plants seem counterproductive to me, but they must not be if they are being use convert energy to electricity. A pump storage plant has to reservoirs, an upper and a lower. Generators rotate the turbine in the opposite direction to pull the water from the lower reservoir to the upper one. After all the water has been transferred to the upper reservoir the water falls past the turbine causing it to spin the correct way, which activates the generators. The tidal power plants use the tides to create electricity. As the tide rises a basin is filled with water and when it gets full a sluice gate is closed to trap the water in the basin. After the tide goes back down the sluice gate is open causing the water to pass through the turbine cause the shaft to the generator to spin.
The up side to using hydropower is that there are no chemicals emitted into the atmosphere, the collecting pool can be used to harvest fish, and that there is little maintenance to be done. The down side is that it is very expensive and it destroys habitats for the wildlife and for humans. I think what as the most interest for me is trying to make these types of plants more environmental friendly. I would also like to help in finding a way to increase the amount of electricity being made so that we will not have to keep burning fossil fuels and destroying our ozone layer. Something else that interested me was the future of hydroelectric energy.
A new way of getting energy from moving water is verdant power. Verdant power is creating a wind field under water. It has a lot of turbines set up at the bottom of a river, creek, cannel, or ocean and the current passing through the turbines would create the power. This is for environmental friendly because there is plenty of room for fish to swim in between the turbines. The only problem is that this does not produce as much energy as a dam does.
I think that becoming an ocean engineer or a mechanical engineer would be the best route if I wanted to pursue my interest in hydropower. I think that this project for engineering exploration will help me find the field of engineering I would like to be. Up until the past week or two I had no idea what kind of an engineer I wanted to be. I am leaning towards mechanical engineer, just because there are more options and if I get bored with something I can always find a new project to work on. I think that becoming a mechanical engineer will help me become a more diverse person and give me more opportunities for jobs.