Renewable Energy - An Introduction

If you think that we will run out of energy if fossil fuel is depleted, you need to read this article.

Fossil fuel is non-renewable energy, that means it will run out a day in future no matter how much it is under our earth's crust. But nowadays we still heavily rely on fossil fuel as our major energy source. We use fossil fuel ( petrol, natural gas, coal ) to generate energy, for transportation and making many daily-use product ( plastic bag, nylon, PVC and etc. ). Can you imagine what will happen when the fossil fuel is exhausted?

We cannot drive to work; cannot watch tv, listen to music, cook, online, light up our house at night and etc. This is because we won't be supplied electricity if no more fossil fuel on earth! ( how to generate electricity as our power plant is based on fossil fuel to operate? ). Maybe you think that such a day will not exist, but let me tell you: "Petroleum and natural gas will run out in less than 50 years time and coal will run out in 100 years time".

After talking about fossil fuel and what will happen if we are running out of fuel ( so-called energy crisis ), let us go straightly into our topic today, the renewable energy. Normally, renewable energy sources like wind power, tidal power and hydropower is used to generate electricity.

Firstly, let us talk about wind power. You may see array of wind turbine lying on a wide area. Wind turbine is huge and is built very high from the ground so that it can convert energy of wind to useful type of energy effectively. How it works? Wind is the moving of air that carries a lot of energy. Wind turbine is a machine that can convert the energy of moving air into rotational kinetic energy of wind turbine and hence generate electricity.

Like wind power, hydropower use the same theory as wind power but hydropower convert the energy of moving water into electricity. But tidal power is a bit complicated compare to hydopower although both of them convert energy of moving water to electrical energy. A reservoir is built at the seaside that have very high tide height ( >5m ), a valve is used to control the water flowing in or out of the reservoir hence is used to generate electricity.

The most usable type of renewable energy is solar power. All of the renewable energy mentioned above can only be used to generate electricity. Solar power is different from the others, it can be used to heat up our home, water and even can be used to cook! And definitely, it can be used to generate electricity by using PV cell. PV cell is a flat panel that uses photoelectric effect to generate electricity.

All of the above renewable energy are clean, bring no pollution and global warming. There are more advantages using renewable energy than non-renewable energy. Therefore more research and development ( R & D ) should be carry out to maximise the usage and efficiency of renewable energy. Also, may renewable energy can fully replace fossil-fuel as soon as possible so that several environmental issues ( global warming, pollution...) can be solved.

I hope that people on this planet will care our mother nature more. So i put articles on how to solve environmental issues and in the same time sustainable develop to promote environmental protection.