Water has been used to power man-made mechanisms for hundreds of years, mostly in food production in the form of a mill wheel to grind corn. However, using the kinetic energy of water probably became a reality earlier than you thought. In 1878, inventor Lord Armstrong lit his home in Northumberland using only the power of a nearby waterfall. It’s not until the latter half of the 20th Century that we began to take advantage of the massive potential of hydroelectric power. Intriguingly, both the dirty and environmentally unfriendly coal power plants and clean, green hydro-power use almost identical technology to generate power. Central to a coal-fi red plant is a turbine: coal is burned to produce heat energy, which is used to boil water into steam, which then drives a turbine. Hydroelectric power removes the coal and steam elements and instead, fl owing water turns the blades of each turbine. By damming a river next to a drop in elevation and releasing a co...
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