The industry of any country consists of a large number of diverse industries, such as engineering or electricity. These are the areas in which a particular country is developing, and different states may have different accents depending on many factors, such as natural resources, technological development, and so on. This article will focus on one very important and actively developing industry today - the electric power industry. Electricity is an industry that has been constantly developing for many years, but it was in recent years that it began to actively move forward, pushing humanity to use more environmentally friendly energy sources.
What it is?
So, first of all, you need to figure out what this industry is all about. Electricity is an energy division that is responsible for the production, distribution, transmission and sale of electricity. Among other industries in this sphere, it is the electric power industry that is the most popular and widespread right away for a number of reasons. For example, due to the ease of its distribution, the possibility of transmitting it over great distances for the shortest periods of time, and also because of its versatility - electrical energy can be easily transformed into other types of energy, such as heat, light, chemical, etc. Further. Thus, it is precisely the development of this industry that great attention is paid to the governments of world powers. Electricity is an industry that has a future. This is exactly what many people think, and that is why you need to become more familiar with it using this article.
Electricity Production Progress
So that you can fully understand how important this industry is for the world, you need to look at how the development of the electric power industry took place throughout the entire history of its existence. It is immediately worth noting that electricity production is indicated in billions of kilowatts per hour. In 1890, when the electric power industry was just beginning to develop, only nine billion kW / h were produced. The great leap occurred by 1950, when more than a hundred times more electricity was already being produced. From that moment on, the development took giant steps - every decade several thousand billion kW / h were added at once. As a result, by 2013, the world powers produced in the amount of 23127 billion kWh - an incredible figure that continues to grow every year. Today, China and the United States of America give the most electricity - these two countries have the most developed electric power industries. China accounts for 23 percent of the world's electricity generated, while the United States accounts for 18 percent. They are followed by Japan, Russia and India - each of these countries has at least four times a smaller share in world electricity production. Well, now you also know the general geography of the electric power industry - it's time to move on to specific types of this industry.
Thermal power industry
You already know that the electric power industry is an energy industry, and the energy industry itself, in turn, is an industry industry as a whole. However, the branching does not end there - there are several types of electric power industry, some of them are very common and are used everywhere, others are not so popular. There are alternative areas of the electric power industry, where non-traditional methods are used to achieve large-scale electricity production without harming the environment, as well as neutralizing all the negative features of traditional methods. But first things first.
First of all, it is necessary to talk about thermal power industry, since it is the most widespread and well-known in the whole world. How is electricity obtained in this way? It is easy to guess that in this case there is a conversion of thermal energy into electrical energy, and thermal energy is obtained by burning various types of fuel. Cogeneration plants can be found in almost every country - this is the simplest and most convenient process for generating large volumes of energy at low cost. However, this process is one of the most harmful to the environment. Firstly, fossil fuels are used to generate electricity, which will one day be guaranteed to end. Secondly, combustion products are released into the atmosphere, poisoning it. That is why there are alternative methods for generating electricity. However, this is far from all traditional types of electric power industry - there are others, and further we will concentrate on them.
Nuclear Power
As in the previous case, when considering the nuclear power industry, much can be learned from the name. In this case, electricity is generated at nuclear reactors, where atoms are split and their nuclei split - as a result of these actions, a large emission of energy occurs, which then transforms into electrical energy. It is unlikely that anyone else knows that this is the most unsafe electric power industry. The industry of not every country has its share in the global production of nuclear electricity. Any leak from such a reactor can lead to catastrophic consequences - it is enough to recall Chernobyl, as well as the incident in Japan. Recently, however, more attention has been paid to safety, and therefore nuclear power plants are being built further.
Hydropower
Another popular way to generate electricity is to get it from water. This process takes place at hydroelectric power plants; it does not require either dangerous processes of fission of the atomic nucleus or fuel burning harmful to the environment, but it also has its drawbacks. Firstly, this is a violation of the natural flow of rivers - dams are built on them, due to which the necessary flow of water into the turbines is created, due to which energy is generated. Often, due to the construction of dams, rivers, lakes and other natural reservoirs are drained and die, therefore, it cannot be said that this is an ideal option for this industry. Accordingly, many electric power enterprises do not turn to traditional, but to alternative types of electricity generation.
Alternative power industry
Alternative electric power industry is a collection of types of electric power industry that differ from the traditional ones mainly in that they do not require any kind of harm to the environment, nor do they endanger anyone. It is about hydrogen, tidal, wave and many other varieties. The most common of them are wind and solar energy. It is on them that the emphasis is placed - many believe that the future of this industry is precisely for them. What is the essence of these species?
Wind energy is the generation of electricity from the wind. Windmills are being built in the fields, which work very efficiently and make it possible to provide energy slightly worse than the methods described earlier, but at the same time, only the wind is needed for the action of the windmills. Naturally, the disadvantage of this method is that the wind is a natural element that cannot be subordinated to itself, but scientists are working to improve the functionality of modern windmills. As for solar energy, here electricity is obtained from sunlight. As in the case of the previous view, it is also necessary to work on increasing the accumulating power, since the sun does not always shine - and even if the weather is cloudless, in any case, night comes at a certain moment when the solar panels are not able to produce electricity.
Power transmission
Well, now you know all the main types of electricity production, however, as you can already understand from the definition of the term electric power industry, everything is not limited to production. Energy needs to be transferred and distributed. So, electrical energy is transmitted through power lines. These are metal conductors that create one large electrical network worldwide. Earlier, air lines were most often used - you can see them along the roads, spread from one pillar to another. Recently, however, cable lines, which are laid underground, have gained great popularity.
History of the development of the electric power industry in Russia
The electric power industry in Russia began to develop at the same time as the world power industry - in 1891, when the transmission of electric power for almost two hundred kilometers was successfully carried out for the first time. In the realities of pre-revolutionary Russia, the electric power industry was incredibly underdeveloped - the annual electricity generation for such a huge country was only 1.9 billion kW / h. When the revolution took place, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin proposed a plan for the electrification of Russia, the implementation of which was launched immediately. By 1931, the planned plan had already been completed, but the speed of development was so impressive that by 1935 the plan was exceeded three times. Thanks to this reform, by 1940, the annual electricity generation in Russia amounted to 50 billion kW / h, which is twenty-five times more than before the revolution. Unfortunately, sharp progress was interrupted by World War II, but after its completion work was restored, and by 1950 the Soviet Union was producing 90 billion kW / h, which amounted to about ten percent of the world's total electricity generation. By the mid-sixties, the Soviet Union came in second in the world in the production of electricity and was second only to the United States. The situation remained at the same high level until the collapse of the USSR, when the electric power industry was by no means the only industry that suffered greatly from this event. In 2003, a new Federal Law on the electric power industry was signed, within the framework of which the fast development of this industry in Russia should take place in the coming decades. And the country is definitely moving in that direction. However, it is one thing to sign the Federal Law on the electric power industry, and it is quite another to implement it. This is what will be discussed later. You will learn about the current problems of the electric power industry in Russia, as well as which ways will be chosen to solve them.
Excess Power Generation
The power industry in Russia is already in much better condition than ten years ago, so we can safely say that progress is underway. However, at a recent energy forum, the main problems of this industry in the country were identified. And the first of them is the excess of electricity generating capacities, which was caused by the mass construction of low power plants in the USSR instead of building a small number of high power plants. All these stations still need to be serviced, so there are two ways out of the situation. The first is the decommissioning of facilities. This option would be ideal if not for the enormous cost of such a project. Therefore, Russia is likely to move towards a second exit, namely, an increase in consumption.
Import substitution
After the introduction of the western stations, the Russian industry very sharply felt its dependence on foreign deliveries - this also affected the electric power industry, where in almost none of the modern fields of activity the complete process of production of these or those generators did not take place exclusively on the territory of the Russian Federation. Accordingly, the government plans to increase production capacities in the necessary directions, control their localization, and also try to get rid of dependence on imports as much as possible.
Fresh air
The problem is that modern Russian companies operating in the electric power industry pollute the air very much. However, the Ministry of Ecology of the Russian Federation tightened legislation and began to collect fines more often for violation of established standards. Unfortunately, the companies suffering from this do not plan to try to optimize their production - they are putting all their efforts into crushing the “green” quantity, and they demand softening of the legislation.
Billions of debt
To date, the total debt of electricity users throughout Russia is about 460 billion Russian rubles. Naturally, if the country had all the money that it owed, then it could develop the electric power industry much faster. Therefore, the government plans to tighten penalties for late payments of electricity bills, and will also urge those who do not want to pay bills in the future to install their own solar panels and supply themselves with energy.
Regulated market
The main problem of the domestic electric power industry is the full market regulation. In European countries, regulation of the energy market is almost completely absent, there is real competition there, so the industry is developing at a tremendous pace. All these rules and regulations hinder development very much, and as a result, the Russian Federation has already begun purchasing electricity from Finland, where the market is practically unregulated. The only solution to this problem is the transition to a free market model and a complete rejection of regulation.