Electricity Generation in Canada

Electricity Consumption

Introduction

Electricity is an essential input for modern society. It is hard to think or conceive the world today without electricity. It is one of the noblest forms of secondary energy, source of providing employment, productivity, technological development, leisure and convenience through the basic transformation of electricity into power, light and heat. Due to this dependence of society in relation to electricity any failure of the electrical system must be mitigated. This brings consequences for the utilities in order to improve them technologically, because both are under pressure from public opinion and because of the supervisory authorities of the electricity sector. Let's stick some milestones for the development of the electricity industry in the world and in Canada, in chronological order of significant events that marked significant accomplishments or changes that contributed to the technological development and structural system of production, transmission and distribution of energy. The electricity consumption in Canada was 15,137.59 kWh in 2010. We will see some electricity generation methods in Canada and, discuss about the best method which is Distributed generation method. Some of these methods are derived from natural resources like wind, solar and tidal energies while other are man made methods.

Electricity Generation methods used in Canada

Several renewable energy sources are utilized by Canada in the generation of the electricity.

water energy

solar energy

Wind energy

tidal and wave

ocean thermal energy

biomass

A non-renewable resources:

hydrogen

magnetohydrodynamic energy

fuel cells

Solar Power

Fig.1

Solar energy can be used to produce electricity and hot water. The method involves conversion of solar radiation into heat, and then fed to the turbine driving the generator, producing electricity. Elements used in it are heliostats and mirrors heated steering with the power of sun and its rays reflected on a high tower absorber, consisting of tubes focusing on the reflected solar radiation from heliostats. Inside the tubular absorber medium circulates (sodium, lithium, helium, potassium nitrate), the driving steam turbine. A variation of this type of power is linear in the form of solar panels in which focal tubular absorbers are placed and working medium flowing. Obtained the power of this approach comes to 1 MW. Power of the central tower are identified in the literature of the Anglo-Saxon acronym CRS (Central Receiver System), a linear power with solar panels in the form of paraboloidów - short for SEGS (Solar Electric Generating System).

One of the disadvantages of the solar power is that all the equipment used in the solar power are expensive and, battery is not charged all the time.

Fig-2

Fig.3

Use of methods with Advantages and Disadvantages

Best Method-DISTRIBUTED GENERATION

Fig.4

Distributed generation is a term used to designate the electric generation carried along or close to the consumer, regardless of power, technology and energy source (Thomas Hughes, 1993). GD technologies have evolved to include increasingly smaller powers. The GD includes co-generators that use generators as a source of energy, and waste fuels process emergency generators, photovoltaic panels, and small hydropower - PCH (Thomas Hughes, 1993, ...