Is the next game-changer in energy generation closer than we think?
Humans have been looking to power “machinery” for a very long time, initially using the natural resources of wind, water, and sunlight.
About 7,000 years ago, someone who lived along the Nile River wove some reeds to make a sheet and used the energy of the wind to propel their boat.
Over time, others figured out how to use the wind to power their somewhat rudimentary mechanical devices, pumping water in China and grinding grain in the Middle East.
Eventually, around 1,000 years ago, wind pumps and windmills were being extensively used for food production – and a few other bits and pieces, like cutting wood.
While even the earliest humans understood that the sun was a source of heat and light – the only source of those for most of the Earth for literal ages – at some point, possibly around 3,000 years ago, sunlight was first used to light fires. Later, in the 3rd century B.C., the Greeks and Romans were known to harness solar power with mirrors to light torches for religious ceremonies.
The earliest use of watermills and water wheels has been recorded as far back as the 4th century BC in the Persian Empire, Iran, and ancient Egypt.
By the time of the Roman Empire water wheels were in widespread use to power sawmills and millstones, and assist with mining, while in ancient China, watermills were used to help operate the bellows for their blast furnaces.
It’s only been all about electricity for the past 150 years
Did you know that it was an English scientist, William Gilbert, who was the first to describe the electrification of many substances and he was the one who coined the term “electricity” in 1600?
You might have heard the story about Benjamin Franklin “discovering” electricity in 1752 when he tied a key to a kite string in a thunderstorm. In reality, that experiment simply proved that lightning consists of electricity.
Many people consider Englishman Michael Faraday the true “father of electricity”, as he discovered electromagnetic induction, the principle behind the electric transformer and generator, in 1831. Faraday created the first generator to produce a steady stream of electricity by spinning a copper disc between the opposite poles of a horseshoe magnet.
There were significant contributions from the likes of Allesandro Volta, Sir Humphry Davy, Joseph Henry, Thomas Davenport, Sir William Robert Grove, Samuel Morse, Charles Brush, and Joseph Swan, before Thomas Edison invented a longer-lasting incandescent light bulb and established the Edison Electric Light Company in New York.
In 1882, Edison opened one of the world’s first central electric power plants able to power 5,000 lights. It used a direct current (DC) power system, unlike the power systems that we use today which use alternating current (AC).
Australia started lighting up … slowly
We’ve come a long way since Sydney’s General Post Office became the first major building in Australia to be lit by electricity in 1878.
In 1894, several main streets in the centre of Melbourne were lit by electricity. The Victorian Parliament passed an Electric Light and Power Act a couple of years later specifying that while anyone could generate electricity for their own needs, it couldn’t be supplied to others without permission.
Ten years after Melbourne’s city streets were lit by electricity, and eight years after the Sydney Electrical Lighting Bill became law, Sydney flicked the switch on electric streetlights. That was almost exactly 120 years ago, at 5 pm on the 8th of July 1904.
After generation came transmission
In the early days, electricity was only generated close to the demand, mainly right in the middle of population centres, including smaller towns like Tamworth in NSW and Nhill in Victoria.
Then, in 1916, Hobart started getting power from 100 kilometres away, via an 88 kV transmission line from the 6800 kW Waddamana hydroelectric power station.
In 1924, Victoria started transmitting electricity to Melbourne from the 50,000 kW Yallourn Power Station in the Latrobe Valley, 160 kilometres away. That was a pretty big deal 100 years ago.
When was the next step change to energy generation?
Two significant, but vastly different, game-changing technologies were brought to fruition in the 1950s.
Italian physicist Enrico Fermi had conducted experiments in 1934 that showed neutrons could split many kinds of atoms. By 1941, Fermi and his associate, Leo Szilard, had a proposed design for a uranium chain reactor.
On December 2, 1942, on a squash court at the University of Chicago, the world entered the nuclear age when Fermi and his group successfully transformed scientific theory into technological reality.
Almost 10 years later, in 1951, the first nuclear reactor to produce electricity, the Experimental Breeder Reactor located near Arco, Idaho, began powering itself. The first nuclear power plant designed to provide energy to a community was established in Obninsk, in the Soviet Union, in 1954.
Meanwhile, also in 1954, solar cells as we know them today came about when a team at Bell Labs invented the silicon photovoltaic (PV) cell.
That first cell converted sunlight at just four per cent efficiency and some 70 years later modern PV cells are four times more efficient than that.
So, what will be next?
The multi-trillion-dollar question “What will be the next game-changer in energy generation?” appears to have a simple, yet still challenging, answer: “If we can only figure out nuclear fusion ….”.
Unlike the established nuclear fission method, which splits heavy atoms and leaves unstable lighter ones behind as radioactive waste, nuclear fusion involves forcing lighter atoms together to create heavier ones while releasing their energy.
Fusion would produce energy at lower costs than we generate it now and leave behind zero greenhouse gas emissions (a fusion reactor produces helium, an inert gas) and no long-term nuclear waste.
Nuclear fusion is the same process that powers stars like the sun. Scientists have been trying to crack the secret of fusion energy as a new, clean source of power for decades, pretty much since Australian physicist Mark Oliphant first demonstrated nuclear fusion was possible in the lab way back in the 1930s.
In the 1950s and ’60s, governments poured money into research, but to no avail. However, over the past few years, the concept has been a focus for many groups around the world and a lot of money from venture capitalists and tech entrepreneurs has started flowing back into the quest for the breakthrough development of commercial-level nuclear fusion power plants.
One project that’s underway is at the University of New South Wales, under the guidance of nuclear engineer Patrick Burr.
“Fusion is at a pivotal point where it’s growing massively,” Dr Burr says.
“And now it’s the time to get into it, so that we can create a domestic Australian fusion industry.”
You can read more about it in this ABC article: UNSW students at work on small-scale fusion reactor as interest in nuclear power grows.
The next Tesla, Faraday, Volta, Einstein, Edison, or Fermi might be experimenting in Sydney right now!
The dream of unlimited cheap and emission-free energy is a very strong motivator.