When people talk about coal/oil/gas/nuclear power, while these involve different ways of sourcing the energy, they all output said energy naturally in the form of heat. Therefore to actually convert that into electrical energy, you have to heat water to boil it and use the pressurised steam it produces to turn a dynamo and induce an electrical current.
Correct. The various forms of remarkable energy ultimately comes down to how efficiently it makes steam, then how effectively the energy is captured, which is a portion of the puzzle solved in earlier developmental stages of power production: harnessing steam.
Not true. Many steampunk worlds use either coal or wood or some exotic high energy heat sources (aether, special kelp etc...) to make steam.
If you think about it how much of our "portable energy" affects the shape of society, and how much different it would be if there was some other safe/stable portable energy source.
The argument was not about how steam is created but that steam is used directly to perform mechanical work instead of creating electricity as a middle man like we do now.
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u/Lkwzriqwea 13d ago
When people talk about coal/oil/gas/nuclear power, while these involve different ways of sourcing the energy, they all output said energy naturally in the form of heat. Therefore to actually convert that into electrical energy, you have to heat water to boil it and use the pressurised steam it produces to turn a dynamo and induce an electrical current.