Electricity Generation

How Electricity Is Produced

In principle, power generation is easy.

As Michael Faraday demonstrated in 1831, electricity is produced when a loop of wire is rotated in a magnetic field. On a much larger scale this is what a power station does, except that the magnet is rotated and the equivalent of Michael Faraday’s coil – a mass of copper windings – is stationary.

In practice, power stations are complex because they are big and need – by minimising the cost of production and maximising efficiency – to get as much electricity as possible from the fuel they use. A coal-fired station acts as an energy converter, turning the energy released from coal into electricity.

Rugeley Power Station consists of two 500 Mega-Watt (MW) coal fired units that are capable of producing up to 8,760,000 Mega-Watt-hours (MWh) of energy in a year.

A single MW is equal to 1 million watts. If you consider that a light bulb in your home uses 100 watts Rugeley Power Station can produce enough energy to power 10 million of these.

A MWh is simply 1 megawatt of energy supplied over a period of 1 hour.