Electricity generation is the process of producing electrical power from sources like fossil fuels, nuclear, wind, solar, and hydro.
Merit order ranks power plants from cheapest to most expensive based on marginal cost. Then comes the strange part: the last plant needed can set the wholesale electricity price for everyone. Here’s why cheap wind can coexist with expensive power, why gas matters so much, and how renewables are rewriting the market.
A feed-in tariff (FIT) pays renewable energy producers a guaranteed price for the electricity they generate. Simple idea, massive consequences. Here’s how FITs work, why governments created them, where the money comes from, and why energy markets are now moving beyond them.
Solar power can become so abundant in the middle of the day that it creates a completely different problem for the electricity grid: too much power at noon, then a frantic scramble for electricity after sunset. That strange pattern is called the duck curve. Here’s what it is, why it happens, and why batteries, EVs, flexible demand, and smarter grids may finally teach the duck some manners.
Wind power turns the kinetic energy of moving air into electricity—but a turbine doesn’t simply “catch” wind like a sail. From uneven solar heating and atmospheric pressure differences to aerodynamic lift, spinning generators, and grid-ready electricity, here’s what actually happens inside a wind turbine.
Imagine running a power system like hosting the world’s most unpredictable party. Guests arrive early, late, hungry, overheated, and sometimes all at once. That is basically how electricity demand behaves. A capacity market exists to make sure enough power is available when the grid gets stressed. Here’s how it works, why it exists, and why it remains one of the most controversial tools in modern electricity markets.
Solar panels don’t care about dinner hour. Wind turbines don’t care about your peak demand. That’s the beauty—and the headache—of intermittent renewable energy. Here’s what it really means, why it exists, how grids deal with it, and why this “problem” is less fatal flaw and more engineering challenge.
Hydropower is what happens when a river stops being “just water” and starts doing electrical engineering. It takes the motion of flowing water, turns it into spinning machinery, and then turns that motion into electricity through electromagnetic induction. Old idea. Massive impact.
Small modular reactors, or SMRs, are the nuclear industry’s attempt to stop building gigantic one-off monsters and start building smaller, factory-made reactors that can be shipped, stacked, and deployed where big plants make no sense. Here’s how SMRs work, why they exist, where they’re showing up, and why the idea is both exciting and suspiciously complicated.
Nuclear fission sounds like the kind of thing you should only discuss in a bunker with three physicists and a lockbox. It is actually much simpler than that. Split a heavy atom, collect the heat, boil water, spin a turbine, make electricity. Here’s what nuclear fission is, why it exists, how it works, where it shows up in real life, and why it matters more right now than a lot of people realize.