Electrical Energy. What Would Our Lives Look Like Without It?
Originally, the primary heat energy source was provided by wood. After that, coal, petroleum and natural gas, provided the society with the amount of energy that it needed. Nowadays, most of the energy that the society uses comes in the form of electricity. The use has definitely changed and electric energy modern appliances are used for air conditioning, heat pumps, and in some corners of the world, you can even find electrical cars.
There are numerous energy sources that man uses to obtain electricity. These sources can be renewable, nuclear or fossil. Among the renewable sources of energy we remind the wind, solar and water energy. The sun provides us a huge amount of energy. Also, the sun influences the hydro, wind and solar energy, and by the process of photosynthesis, even biomass. All these energy sources are used to obtain electricity and use it in the numerous sectors that can't live without it. Industrial, transportation, residential and commercial sectors, need huge amounts of electricity to keep the society working. But, most of the electricity used today, comes from the burning of coal, and from the nuclear power plants. The fossil units use coal, petroleum or different biomass sources to burn and to obtain electric energy, while nuclear power plants use fission to provide us with electricity. Biomass burning, nuclear plants and hydroelectric plants are the main energy suppliers in the world. These are also named primary suppliers.
While a few centuries ago, people used kerosene lamps, wood and coal to cook or to heat their homes and iceboxes to cool the food, nowadays, all these have been replaced by air-conditioning, refrigerators, electric light bulbs or electric stoves. We use some devices called transformers to send electricity on long distances. The energy travels to some cables, and can get to places that are far away from any electric generating plants. For all this use of electric energy we must be thankful to Nikola Tesla, Thomas Edison and Benjamin Franklin's genius minds.
Although most of the people use electricity and recognize its importance, few of them try to imagine how our society would look like without it. Just imagine life without your television, without computers, refrigerators, air conditioning or even without any light in our homes during the night. Therefore we must not think at electrical energy as our right, but as a privilege, and understand its importance in our lives.