The hydroelectricity plants extract the potential energy of highly deployed massive object (water) as it falls down. Without turbine, all that energy would be converted into speed (kinetic energy) at the bottom of the waterfall and further into heat. The turbine produces energy by slowing water down.
The efficiency of turbine, how much energy is extracted by turbine, can be charactarized by the exhaust speed: the faster is the output stream, the less efficient our turbine is since not all speed/energy is extracted. So, slower the turbine spins, the higher is its the efficiency. The extraction is 100% when turbine does not spin and no electricity is produced at all. So, there must be a trade-off between the efficiency and amount of the output, the trade-off determined by the turbine spinning speed (exhaust speed). How is it decided?
I read that large modern water turbines operate at mechanical efficiencies greater than 90%. Since couple of percent losses are inevitable whatever you do, it seems that they say that theoretical efficiency is 100%. Identical efficiency is provided by switching power supply converters, which are 100% efficient in theory. I understand the secret exploited by SMPS. My question is how similar, 100% energy extraction, is achieved through the turbines, which seem to operate linearly (spinning at the same pace) rather than switching mode pumping. What is the water release speed when 100% energy extraction is achieved?
This question is actually is not limited to water wheels. Today wind turbines are becoming more popular and I am curious how do you extract all power from the wind flow. If turbine spins quckly, the air is realased at high speed, which means that you do not slow down the flow, which means that it makes no work. On the other hand, if if you stop the flow completely, your turbine stops and no power is extracted either. What is the optimal turbine speed?
No comments:
Post a Comment