this post was submitted on 30 Nov 2025
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[โ€“] gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de 22 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago) (1 children)

There's only 3 major ways to transform different forms of energy into electricity, which are:

  • solar panels (light -> electricity)
  • mechanical engines/generators (mechanical movement -> electricity)
  • electrochemical battery (chemical dipole -> electricity)

there's a whole lot more, such as thermoelectric generator and piezoelectricity but these are the three significant ones.

note that i distinguish these categories by their core essence, such as whether they're using changes in magnetic flux (like a mechanical generator) or transferring 1 photon on each electron (like solar panels), instead of looking at what source type of energy they transform.

because there's many ways to transform e.g. light energy into electricity. you could also heat water with the sunlight and then drive a steam engine with it. but that's not what i care about. i care about the fundamental connection between different types of energy, and how they can be directly transformed to one another.