All posts tagged: Electricity

Visualizing 75 Years Of America’s Electricity Transition

Visualizing 75 Years Of America’s Electricity Transition

Published by Jenni Sidey

Over the past 75 years, the U.S. electricity system has shifted from one dominated by coal to one in which natural gas and renewables supply nearly two-thirds of generation. This visualization, via Visual Capitalist’s Niccolo Conte, shows annual U.S. electricity generation by source from 1950 to 2025 using data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. It tracks output in billions of kilowatt-hours and each source’s share of the electricity mix over time. Natural Gas and Renewables Lead U.S. Electricity Generation Coal supplied 46.4% of U.S. electricity in 1950 and remained the country’s largest power source for decades. By 2025, however, its share had fallen to 16.6%. Natural gas moved in the opposite direction, rising from 13.5% to 40.8% and overtaking coal in 2016. The table below shows each energy source’s share of total U.S. electricity generation at 15-year intervals from 1950 to 2025. Energy Source Share of U.S. Electricity Generation 1950 1965 1980 1995 2010 2025 Natural Gas 13.5% 21.0% 15.1% 14.8% 24.0% 40.8% Renewables 30.2% 18.6% 12.4% 11.4% 10.2% 24.0% Nuclear 0.0% 0.4% 11.0% 20.1% …

Realta Fusion generates electricity directly from a fusion reaction, an apparent first

Realta Fusion generates electricity directly from a fusion reaction, an apparent first

Published by Miika Tikkanen

For fusion startups, the hard part is over: Thanks to a groundbreaking experiment in 2022, we know that controlled nuclear fusion reactions can generate more power than they consume. But now companies need to prove their reactors can make enough electricity to be profitable. One option is to simply turn up the temperature, generating more heat to produce more steam to spin a bigger turbine. Another is to harvest electricity directly from the fusion reactions themselves, an approach that promises to be more efficient. Realty Fusion announced that an experiment it conducted on June 19 successfully powered a lightbulb using electricity harvested directly from WHAM, its demonstration fusion device. The Wisconsin-based startup believes it is the first private company to publicly demonstrate such a feat. “We can take power from a plasma,” Kieran Furlong, co-founder and CEO of Realta Fusion, told TechCrunch. The milestone shows “what’s possible,” he added. Realta plans to use direct electricity conversion to heat the plasma in its reactor, a process that requires a lot of energy. Furlong estimates that direct …

The mystery of how volcanic lightning happens has been solved

The mystery of how volcanic lightning happens has been solved

Published by Miika Tikkanen

Physicists have solved a longstanding mystery around the process that creates volcanic lightning: when similar particles rub together, why do some become positively charged while others become negatively charged? The exchange of electric charge when two objects touch, called the triboelectric effect, is what causes hair to be attracted towards a balloon after rubbing. In a cloud of volcanic ash, swirling particles of silicon dioxide exchange electric charge as they collide. The positively and negatively charged particles separate and lightning occurs when current flows between the two. But physicists couldn’t explain what breaks the symmetry between two particles of the same material and causes charge to flow one way or the other. “There are a lot of candidates,” says Galien Grosjean, now at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. “People suspect that humidity is important, or roughness, or the crystalline structure.” While working at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria in Klosterneuburg, Grosjean wondered if the answer lay in carbon-containing molecules on the surface of the particles. Such molecules are ubiquitous in nature, and materials …