Why don't they recyle electricity?

Question

I only have basic understanding electricity so please help me understand the reason?

As far as I know, electricity travels from the hot terminal powering a device and returns back to the power company through the neutral terminal. Whey can the used energy be converted back to usable energy? I heard there's a greater power required to do so so it's not practical.

Answer 1

Time for some watertron theory. What is watertron theory? Using an analogy from plumbing to explain an electrical concept.



If we were to consider a plumbing circuit used to run a hydraulic motor instead of amps we would be taking about gallons (or liters) per minute. Instead of voltage we would be talking about pressure (pounds per square inch, e.g.)



As the fluid flows through the circuit the pressure drops with the greatest drop in the hydraulic motor. By the time the fluid makes it back to the pump (the 'voltage') all the energy it has has been used up getting it around the circuit.



As far as using a transformer to recover energy, all a transformer does is change the voltage and current. And there's the problem with that approach. If we double the voltage we halve the current so that the total power out of the transformer is equal to the total power into the transformer.



Of course that assumes that the transformer is 100% efficient. Which is not the case in the real world. Transformers come close to 100% but there is always some energy lost in the form of heat and even sound. (The humming of a transformer requires energy from somewhere.)

Answer 2

You raise a good question. It is true that electrons flow from the hot terminal (which is at higher voltage) to the ground terminal (which is at "0" voltage). However, electricity is not the same thing as electrons.



You can think of electricity as the energy stored in the electrons. That is, the electrons are in a higher energy state at the hot terminal, and lose that energy (presumably in your devices, appliances, etc) when they move to the grounded terminal.



You can think of it like this: suppose you have a waterfall, and you use the pouring water to rotate a water wheel (like a mill). The water drives the wheel, providing you energy to grind stuff up (or whatever mills do). At the end of the process, you have water in a lake or something below where it started. While you have all the water you started with, you can't use it until it gets back up to the top of the waterfall (which is hard). The water stores the energy in the form of gravitational potential energy. That energy is released when the water flows.



The electrons store the energy in the from of electrical potential energy. The only way to "recycle" them is to provide them with energy again (just like you would lift the water to the top of the waterfall). This is what power plants do (with a turbine), whether from coal power, nuclear power, hydroelectric, and so on.



ANSWER TO TRANSFORMER QUESTION:

No. Transformers transfer energy; they conserve it. You can see this from the device law that Vs*Is = Vt*It (source and target) - power is conserved. For more, check out the wikipedia article on transformers.

Answer 3

think of electricity as a pipe full of water fashioned in a loop. The power company is a pump on one side of the loop, and you the user have a paddle wheel, that you use to turn some widget.. . When the water on the high side falls through the paddle wheel, you get the energy from the pump, however to keep the circuit going, the water at the bottom of the wheel flows back to the power company's pump... there isn't any 'used energy' to recover; the generator at the power company merely keeps it circulating to keep your lights on.

Answer 4

They do recycle electricity, this is how. At night when there is less demand the excess juice is used to pump water up into a reservoir, then during daytime when demand increases the water is released thru turbines to generate new electricity.

Answer 5

Power is not returned to the provider, it is totally used up at the site of the electrical load, and the user is charged for the wattage used.

Answer 6

there is not any the place to keep the electrical energy. At night there is as lots electrical energy produced as interior the sunlight hours, yet there is not any place to keep it so it quite is basically wasted. hence you will possibly desire to fee issues like batteries and cellular telephones and so on over night. they might keep the electrical energy in batteries in spite of the undeniable fact that it would take a variety of of them and we might run out of room to keep them.

Answer 7

well i guess it's what u said.. it's not practical and also isn't electricity a clean renewable source of energy? there wouldn't really be a point of recycling it since it's a never ending supply.

Answer 8

It would be way too complicated!