Question: What is the most effiecient way to get electircity

Simon Holyoake answered on 21 Jun 2013:

the most efficient way to generate electricity is through renewable power, a solar panel for example, turns ordinary sunlight (which is totally free!) into electricity, other than the costs (both material and energy) in making the solar panel, it’s free!

however solar panels aren’t hugely effective at turning all available light into electricity, on every square metre of the earth, there is an average of about 1kilowatt of solar energy striking, but a 1 square metre solar panel only generates about 100W of electrical power so is only about 10% efficient

currently one of the more efficient ways currently available to generate electricty is actually using gas! although it’s a fossil fuel, it can be very efficiently used, it powers giant gas turbines (kind of like a jet engine) which spin and generate electricity, then the waste heat that comes out of the turbine can be recovered and used to heat water to drive a steam turbine, generating more electricity, in this manner, Gas turbines can be approximately 80% efficient!

The process of using heat to generate electricity is quite inefficient anyway, heat energy is quite a low grade form of energy, so it takes a lot of losses to turn it back into a high grade such as electrical energy

so there is no ‘most efficient’ way, but the best sources are definitely the free sources (like solar, wind, tidal and hopefully some day, fusion power!)