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Ku Energy Corporation Business Information, Profile, and History

One Quality Street
Lexington, Kentucky 40507
U.S.A.

History of Ku Energy Corporation

KU Energy Corporation provides electric service to about 440,000 people in 77 Kentucky and 5 Virginia counties. Through its primary subsidiary, Kentucky Utilities Company, it operates seven power generating stations. A leading institution in the state, Kentucky Utilities Company has grown steadily during its 80-plus years of service to the region.

When Kentucky Utilities Company was formed in the early 1900s, the electric industry was still in its infancy. The first commercial power station, Thomas Edison's Pearl Street Station, had been installed in New York in 1883. Even 30 years later, however, most regions in the United States were without centralized electric service, and some rural communities had no electricity at all. Most towns in Kentucky got their electricity from small, local generators. The power was often costly and the service poor. The generators only ran from dusk to midnight, and, in a confusing arrangement, different generators often competed for customers within the same town.

It was this setting that lured Harry Reid from his New York home to the tiny town of Versailles, Kentucky. Having witnessed the success of central power stations in his home state, Reid saw an opportunity to bring the same type of service to Kentucky. So, with $200 in savings and the promise of credit from an east coast friend, the bespectacled Reid traveled by rail to Versailles. He arrived in 1905 with the intent of purchasing its small, run-down power plant.

Reid's plan was to eventually acquire a network of power generators that would serve the entire region, but his vision was dashed shortly after his arrival to the Blue Grass State. Although Reid was able to purchase the Versailles power station, his east coast friend died, leaving him strapped for cash. Unable to afford the expensive repairs needed to refurbish his dilapidated station, the local city council prepared to terminate his street lighting contract. The final blow came when Reid contracted typhoid fever and nearly expired.

Reid recovered and was able to rekindle his fading vision in 1912. He sold his power plant and led a group of like-minded entrepreneurs to form the Kentucky Utilities Company (KU), which began operations December 2, 1912. Reid was named general manager of the Lexington-based enterprise, which started out operating local electric systems and a few ice and water companies. With a hefty $2.7 million in capital, the company quickly purchased stations in eight surrounding areas (including Versailles), bringing its customer base to 4,277 and its first-year receipts to nearly $290,000.

KU continued to expand its operations aggressively throughout the decade and into the 1920s. By 1916, in fact, KU was serving 51 communities in the central and western regions of the state, many of which had never enjoyed access to electricity. By the early 1920s, KU was providing service to customers in eastern Virginia. Furthermore, KU benefited greatly from the burgeoning coal mining industry of that era. Besides consuming almost two-thirds of KU's electricity output by 1920, the local coal mines supplied a cheap source of fuel for KU's power plants. KU augmented its income from electricity operations by selling electrical appliances and charging people to wire their homes.

KU snapped up small power generators and even entire competing generation companies to build its network during the 1920s, and it erected poles and power lines throughout its service regions. The work was hard. Line crews traveled in wagons or trucks and lived out of tents for weeks on end. After falling the timber that was used for the poles, they used mules to drag the lumber from the forest. Even after the power lines were built and the generators were working, numerous problems plagued the systems. Aside from technical breakdowns, which occurred with frustrating regularity, high winds and ice often inflicted long-lasting damage to the company's fragile networks.

KU's early years were filled with telling examples of the type of ingenuity and perseverance that originally settled the region. One day, for example, the smokestack at KU's power plant in Richmond melted and folded in the middle, closing the draft necessary to keep the boilers operating. The manager of the plant grabbed his shotgun and a box of shells and started blasting holes in the stack. By the time he had emptied his gun the stack was again functioning properly. In another episode described in company annals, lightning struck and knocked out power at a KU plant two times during a storm, once even striking the plant operator. After a third bolt hit nearby, the operator turned the power off himself, exclaiming "If a Higher Power is going to run His light plant, I'm going to shut down mine."

KU persevered through the 1920s and was able to expand its reach significantly. Early in the decade, however, management realized that its disjointed network of plants and lines would soon be insufficient to handle the electricity demands that would arise in the near future. So, it began tying its operations together with the intent of creating one or two major power producing facilities that would distribute electricity to its broad customer base. To this end, the company constructed a 30,000-kilowatt power plant in Pineville, Kentucky in 1924. It served most of its central and southeastern markets. In the late 1920s, moreover, KU tapped into power provided by the massive Dix Dam. At 105 feet higher than Niagara Falls, the Dix hydroelectric dam was the tallest dam east of the Rocky Mountains at the time it was built.

By the end of the "roaring twenties," KU was providing electricity to over 250 communities, most of which had been added to the KU network since 1925. It had made large strides toward its goal of consolidating its systems, virtually redesigning and rebuilding the infrastructure in several service regions. KU had also initiated programs to take its service to small rural areas. In addition, its appliances division had grown into a surprisingly healthy sideline. Although the company's expansion was stumped in the five years following the Great Depression, growth resumed in the latter half of the 1930s. Importantly, KU absorbed competitors Lexington Utilities Company and Kentucky Power and Light Company in the early 1940s, making KU the dominant supplier in the state.

World War II delayed KU's construction of its gigantic Tyrone Plant until 1946. Completion of that facility in 1948 marked the beginning of a huge period of growth that would change the face of the fledgling power producer. Indeed, a vast supply of electricity would be needed to fuel the postwar U.S. economic boom. Recognizing the emerging need, KU decided to liquidate its varied operations--by the 1940s KU was operating water works, selling ice and appliances, and operating buses systems and trolleys--and focusing solely on developing an electrical supply network. In addition to the Tyrone plant, KU added its Green River Operating Station during that period.

During the 1950s KU became a truly statewide supplier of electricity, thus realizing its founder's original dream--Reid had stepped aside as president of the company in 1927. Demand for electricity soared during the 1950s and 1960s. Hundreds of manufacturing companies commenced operations in the state and the residential population boomed. Furthermore, the use of electrical appliances, such as water heaters and air conditioners, vastly broadened applications for electricity. Between 1960 and 1970, annual power consumption in Kentucky more than doubled. Despite government-supported utilities (i.e. the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) and rural electric cooperatives), which captured a significant share of the power generation market during the 1940s and throughout the mid-1900s, KU managed to sustain a healthy pattern of growth.

By the early 1970s, KU's generating capacity had soared to more than 1.2 million kilowatts (kw). Much of this increased capacity was the result of the first of a new generation of massive power generators that KU built in 1970 and 1971. Rated at 427,000 kw, the new Unit Three generator at KU's Brown Plant was capable of producing close to the total amount of KU electricity consumed annually just 15 years earlier. In 1974, KU added an even larger unit to its new station at Ghent on the Ohio River in northern Kentucky.

The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) in the Middle East slashed production in the mid-1970s, causing oil and gas prices to soar and resulting in what was referred to as an energy crisis. In response, KU and other utilities shifted their marketing strategies to emphasize conservation rather than increased consumption. Also during that period, dozens of tornadoes inflicted heavy damage on many of KU's facilities. The company was further strained by the winter of 1977-1978, during which extreme cold diminished local coal inventories. These problems, combined with general economic sluggishness in the region, nearly crippled KU by the late 1970s.

KU, under the direction of then-President William A. Duncan, Jr., withstood the crises of the 1970s and even managed to position itself for expansion during the coming decade. William B. Bechanan assumed Duncan's position in 1978, shortly before the company moved into its new nine-story corporate headquarters building in downtown Lexington. Early in the 1980s, KU completed construction of major new generation facilities. In addition, it opened a $6.6 million high-tech addition to its aging System Control Center, which served as a sort of central nervous system for KU's operations. The updated center greatly increased power generation efficiency and service.

Although several factors, such as the increasing popularity of natural gas heating in homes, detracted from the overall performance of the electric utilities industry during the late 1970s and early 1980s, KU managed to remain profitable and even to steadily enlarge its operations. To overcome lagging demand growth, KU initiated several programs during the early 1980s to increase consumption. Its economic development thrust, for example, helped state officials to attract major electricity-consuming manufacturers to Kentucky. Its Wise Choice Home program offered financial incentives to customers whose homes met energy efficiency guidelines, thus helping KU reclaim some of the residential energy market that it had lost to natural gas.

KU's growth during the 1970s and early 1980s represented a decline from the rate of expansion the company enjoyed during the boom years of the 1950s and 1960s. Nevertheless, it posted solid gains throughout much of that period. 1977 sales of $261 million, for example, swelled to $373 million in 1980 and to a whopping $512 million by 1983. Likewise, net income jumped from about $22 million to $27 million to $76 million in the same years. These figures reflected particularly strong growth in consumption by commercial and industrial sectors. KU's financial performance also reflected regulation of most of its rates by the Kentucky Public Service Commission, which served to protect consumers and restrict KU's profitability.

The power generation industry began to change in the 1980s. Alternative fuels, new energy technologies, slowing growth in demand, and a range of environmental issues diminished the industry's strength. KU, like many other traditional power generation companies, changed its focus during the decade away from expanding its generation capacity. Instead, it started to concentrate its efforts on increasing efficiency, boosting marketing efforts aimed at its most profitable niches, and improving customer service.

KU's increased emphasis on efficiency during the late 1980s merely augmented an already strong reputation for low-cost performance. Partly because of its reliance on coal, the company was already a low-cost leader in the U.S. power-producing industry. In 1987, in fact, the average residential electric bill in the United States for 500 kilowatt hours of energy was $40.21. KU customers, in contrast, paid only $27.02 for the same amount of power. KU was also a leader in its own state--competing TVA utilities charged $29.13. Furthermore, KU's emphasis on cost containment contributed to vastly improved performance by the 1990s. Indeed, as the national average increased to $48.25 by 1993, KU's price for 500 kilowatt hours actually fell to $25.33, a real victory for the company.

Thanks in part to cost control efforts and improved customer service, KU managed to stabilize its earnings and revenues during the middle and late 1980s, despite overall industry malaise. Consumption of KU's electricity increased only 22 percent between 1983 and 1987, and its actual sales almost stagnated, growing from $530 million in 1984 to only $531 million by 1987. Although profits dipped to $54 million in 1986, they bounced back to $65 million one year later.

KU, like many other large U.S. energy producers, continued to struggle during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Weak demand growth and an explosion of new environmental restrictions capped industry earnings and pummeled many competitors. KU was especially battered by the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments, which instituted new restrictions on the amount of pollution that could be emitted by coal-burning power plants. Because over 99 percent of KU's energy was produced by coal-fired facilities, it faced major expenditures during the 1990s to bring its plants into compliance. The Kentucky Public Service Commission granted KU permission in 1994 to implement an environmental surcharge to help recover the costs of complying with the Clean Air Act amendments and any applicable federal, state, and local requirements that apply to coal combustion.

To bolster slacking profits, KU revised its growth strategy to take advantage of The National Energy Policy Act of 1992, industry deregulation enacted by Congress. The organization was restructured in 1991 as KU Energy Corporation with Kentucky Utilities Company as a wholly owned subsidiary. KU Energy's second wholly owned subsidiary, KU Capital Corporation, was created as a minor division to manage the organization's nonutility, energy-related investments. Specifically, the company was focusing on investments in independent power projects encouraged by the new legislation.

Meanwhile, KU continued to strive toward greater productivity. The company implemented an array of high-tech information systems during the early and mid-1990s designed to increase efficiency and customer service. It also worked to ensure that its new and existing plants utilized state-of-the-art generation technology. Evidencing KU's success in the efficiency arena was a 1993 study conducted by a major investment banking firm. It ranked KU production costs second lowest of 80 investor-owned utilities. Despite these efforts, however, weak markets allowed KU to realize only tepid gains. Sales increased a measly ten percent between 1990 and 1993, to $607 million, as net income fluctuated between $75 million and $80 million annually.

Going into the mid-1990s KU faced ongoing obstacles to growth. Increased competition, lackluster demographic forecasts, and environmental difficulties would likely linger at least through the turn of the century. On the other hand, John T. Newton, KU Energy president since 1987, hoped that his company would benefit from industry deregulation and the company's subsequent activities related to independent power projects. Regardless of its performance in the future, KU Energy's customer base of 440,000 and its forceful presence in Kentucky almost ensured it a prominent role in the state's electric-generating community through the end of the century.

Principal Subsidiaries: Kentucky Utilities Company; KU Capital Corporation.

Related information about Energy

An abstract calculable quantity associated with all physical processes and objects, whose total value is found always to be conserved; symbol E, units J (joule); one of the most important concepts in physics. It is an additive, scalar quantity, which may be transferred but never destroyed, and so provides a useful book-keeping device for the analysis of processes. It is sometimes called the capacity for doing work. Although many terms are used to describe energy (eg thermal energy, kinetic energy), they refer to the same energy, but indicate its different manifestations. For example, a battery driving a propeller immersed in water converts chemical energy to electrical energy, which is converted to mechanical energy in the propeller, and finally to heat energy as the water temperature is increased.

The main sources of electrical energy are fossil fuels (petroleum, coal, and natural gas), water power, and nuclear power. Solar power, wind power, and coal provide c.75% of world energy needs; natural gas c.20%; water power (hydroelectricity) c.2%; and nuclear energy c.1%. The search for new sources of energy is a continuing one, since that provided by the fossil fuels will eventually run out.

Unreferenced

In general, the concept of energy refers to "the potential for causing changes." (See here.)

In physics, energy is the ability to do work and has many different forms (potential, kinetic, electromagnetic, etc). The SI unit of energy, the joule, equals one newton applied through one meter, for example.

Etymology

The etymology of the term is from Greek ????????, ??- means "in" and ????? means "work"; For example, electrical energy stored in a battery, the chemical energy stored in a piece of food, the thermal energy of a water heater, or the kinetic energy of a moving train.

In 1807, Thomas Young was the first to use the term "energy" instead of vis viva to refer to the product of the mass of an object and its velocity squared. Gustave-Gaspard Coriolis described "kinetic energy" in 1829 in its modern sense, and in 1853, William Rankine coined the term "potential energy."

The development of steam engines required engineers to develop concepts and formulas that would allow them to describe the mechanical and thermal efficiencies of their systems. Engineers such as Sadi Carnot and James Prescott Joule, mathematicians such as テ盈ile Claperyon and Hermann von Helmholtz , and amateurs such as Julius Robert von Mayer all contributed to the notions that the ability to perform certain tasks, called work, was somehow related to the amount of energy in the system. The nature of energy was elusive, however, and it was argued for some years whether energy was a substance (the caloric) or merely a physical quantity, such as momentum.

William Thomson (Lord Kelvin) amalgamated all of these laws into his laws of thermodynamics, which aided in the rapid development of energetic descriptions of chemical processes by Rudolf Clausius, Josiah Willard Gibbs, Walther Nernst. In addition, this allowed Ludwig Boltzmann to describe entropy in mathematical terms, and to discuss, along with Jo?ef Stefan, the laws of radiant energy.

During a 1961 lecture for undergraduate students at the California Institute of Technology, Richard Feynman, a celebrated physics teacher and a Nobel Laureate, had said "There is a fact, or if you wish, a law, governing natural phenomena that are known to date. Thus in the context of physics energy is said to be the ability to do work, the strict mathematical definition of energy in physics is always done via the amount of work itself (done by or against specified force). For example, a gravitational potential energy is defined as the amount of work to elevate (or lower) a mass against a gravitational force; Because work is frame dependent (= can only be defined relative to certain initial state or reference state of the system), energy also becomes frame dependent. For example, a speeding bullet has kinetic energy in the reference frame of a non-moving observer, but it has zero kinetic energy in its proper (co-moving) reference frame -- because it takes zero work to accelerate a bullet from zero speed to zero speed. However, when the total energy of a system cannot be decreased by simple choice of reference frame, then the (minimal) energy remaining in the system is associated with an invariant mass of the system. In this special frame, called the center-of-momentum frame or center-of-mass frame, total energy of the system E and its invariant mass m are related by Einstein's famous equation E=mcツイ.

Chemistry: Because atoms and molecules have electrically charged particles, (electrons and protons) in them, electric forces are at work during the rearrangement of atoms (during formation or decomposition of molecules). The concept of free energy is a synthesis of energy and entropy. www.entropysimple.com/content.htm#entropy Free energy is a useful concept in chemistry, because energy considerations alone are not sufficient to decide the possibility of a chemical reaction. According to the second law of thermodynamics, www.secondlaw.com/ the entropy of the universe must increase in all spontaneous processes (including chemical processes), and energy is transformed from one form to another (including from heat to any other form) so long as the second law is not violated. At a given temperature the fraction of molecules with this energy is usually proportional to the Boltzmann's population factor of exp(-E/kT).

Biology: Energy transformation, is essential for the sustenance of life. Other chemical bonds include bonds in ATP and acetate, which in turn is derived from fats and oils.crab.rutgers.edu/~peterpal/Chap25.ppt#256,1,Biochemical Energetics These molecules, along with oxygen, are common stores of concentrated energy for biological processes. Energy diffusion from more to less concentrated forms (net increase in entropy for the universe) is the driving force of all biological processes as all biochemical processes are a subset of chemical processes. Molecular biology and biochemistry are essentially the making and breaking of certain chemical bonds in the molecules found in biological organisms.

Biologists also study the way energy flows from one organism to another as food or nutrient as part of the science of ecology.

The total energy captured by photosynthesis in green plants from the solar radiation is 91 x 10²⁶ joules of energy per year .www.terrapub.co.jp/e-library/kawahata/pdf/343.pdf Annual energy captured by photosynthesis in green plants

Meteorology The Earth's weather patterns, including energy-releasing processes like lightning, hurricanes, snow avalanches, and floods, are all powered ultimately by the energy of sunlight striking the Earth. Although this amount varies a little each year, as a result of solar flares, prominences and the sunspot cycle, it has been estimated that the average total solar incoming radiation (or insolation) is 342 watts per square meter incident to the summit of the atmosphere, at the equator at midday, a figure known as the Solar Constant. However, energy may be temporarily locally stored during this process, and the sudden release of such stored sources is responsible for the most dramatic processes mentioned above.

Geology: volcanos, earthquakes, landslides, and tsunamis are all results of similar sudden releases of stored energy, in the crust of earth. From the study of neutrinos radiated from the Earth (see KamLAND), scientists have recently estimated that about 24 terawatts of this energy comes from radioactive decay (principally of potassium 40, thorium 232 and uranium 238), with the remaining 12.9 terawatts coming from energies produced by the continuing gravitational sorting of the core and mantle of the earth, energies left over from the formation of the Earth, about 4.57 billion years ago.

The magnitude of both these forms of energy decline over time, and based on half-life alone, it has been estimated that the current radioactive energy of the planet represents less than 1% of that which was available at the time the planet formed. As a result, geological forces of continental accretion, subduction and sea floor spreading, which release up to 90% of this available energy, were more active in the Archaean and Proterozoic periods than they are today. The remaining 10% of geological tectonic energy comes through hotspots produced by mantle plumes, resulting in shield volcanoes like Hawaii, geyser activity like Yellowstone or flood basalts like Iceland.

Tectonic process, driven by heat from the Earth's interior, metamorphose weathered rocks, and during orogeny periods, lift them up into mountain ranges. Similarly, the energy release which drives an earthquake represents stresses in rocks that are mechanical potential energy which has been similarly stored from tectonic processes.

The remaining energy which is responsible for the geological processes of erosion and deposition is a result of the interaction of solar energy and gravity. When water vapour condenses to fall as rain, it dissolves small amounts of carbon dioxide, making a weak acid. This acid acting upon the metallic silicates that form most rocks produces chemical weathering, removing the metals, and leading to the production of rocks and sand, carried by wind and water downslope through gravity to be deposited at the edge of continents in the sea. The source of this energy is ultimately derived either from gravitational collapse of matter which was distributed in the Big Bang, or else from fusion of lighter elements (primarily hydrogen) created in the Big Bang. These light elements were spread too fast and too thinly in the Big Bang process (see nucleosynthesis) to be able to form the most stable and low-energy kinds of atoms, which have medium-sized atomic nuclei, like iron and nickel.

Forms and relations between different forms

In the context of natural sciences, energy has different forms: thermal, chemical, electrical, radiant, nuclear etc. They can all be, in fact, reduced to kinetic energy or potential energy. By the equipartition theorem each degree of freedom of a particle has an associated energy, {1over{2}}kT, such that the energy per particle is proportional to temperature. For a monatomic gas having N particles each with three degrees of freedom, the internal energy is:

overline{E_{kT}}= {3over{2}} NkT

where k is the Boltzmann constant and T is absolute temperature. Although some heat transfer is mediated by the kinetic energy of a system's constituent particles, this kinetic energy exhibits Brownian motion, a highly disorganized state. A quantum of energy of the electromagnetic field (energy of a photon) is equal to: {!E_{kR}}= hf where f is the frequency of the photon and h is the Planck's constant. Because energy or momentum can code information, photons can be used to transfer information (see fiber optics as an example).

Potential

Potential energy is stored unreleased energy (a positive quantity, like monetary savings), or else required energy (like monetary debt). Electromagnetic potential energy is equal to: E_{pE} = {q Q over 4piepsilon_0 r} where q and Q are the electric charges on the objects in question, r is the distance between them, and ?₀ is the Electric constant of a vacuum.

Energy can also be stored in a magnetic field, and is related to the relative motion of electric charges, for example, Superconducting magnetic energy storage can be called magnetic potential energy.This kind of potential energy is related to electric potential energy and is considered a form of it, since both types of potential are mediated by the electromagnetic field. Magnetic potential energy is most familar as the type of energy storage which allows transfer of power within an electrical transformer. This energy is significant portion (about half) of thermal energy for strongly-bonded systems (=solids and liquids), but much less in gasses.
Potential chemical energy is the energy which may potentially be liberated, when the bonds of chemical structures are rearranged (energy is never stored in chemical bonds except as a negative quantity, but net energy may be released when weak chemical bonds are broken and stonger bonds are made). In the ideal case, of Hooke's Law, the energy is equal to: !E_{pE} = {frac{1}{2} k x^2} where k is the spring constant, dependent on the individual spring, and x is the deformation of the object.
Nuclear potential energy, along with Electric potential energy, provides the energy released from nuclear fission and nuclear fusion processes. Ultimately, the energy released in nuclear processes is so large that the change in mass is appreciable as being several parts per thousand in mass: !E = {Delta m c^2} where ?m is the amount of rest mass released into the surroundings as active energy (heat, light, kinetic energy), and c is the speed of light in a vacuum. The energy from the Sun also called the solar energy is an example of this form of energy.

Conservation of energy

Energy is subject to the law of conservation of energy (which is a mathematical restatement of shift symmetry of time).
In practice, during any energy transformation in (macroscopic) system, some energy is converted into incoherent microscopic motion of parts of the system (which is usually called heat or thermal motion), and the entropy of the system increases. Due to mathematical impossibility to invert this process (see statistical mechanics), the efficiency of energy conversion in a macroscopic system is always less than 100%.

The first law of thermodynamics states that the total inflow of energy into a system must equal the total outflow of energy from the system, plus the change in the energy contained within the system. This law is used in all branches of physics, but frequently violated for short enough periods of time during which energy can not be mathematically defined yet (see quantum electrodynamics and off shell concept). Noether's theorem relates the conservation of energy to the time invarianceptolemy.eecs.berkeley.edu/eecs20/week9/timeinvariance.html of physical laws.

The law of conservation of energy, a fundamental principle of physics, follows from the translational symmetry of time, a property of most phenomena below the cosmic scale that makes them independent of their locations on the time coordinate. The fact that energy can not be defined for arbitrary short periods of time in quantum mechanics follows from the definition of energy operator which results mathematically in the mutual uncertainty of time and energy known as the uncertainty principle:

Delta E Delta t ge h/4pi

Despite being seemingly insignificant, this principle has profound impact on processes in our Universe. It results in the existence of virtual particles which carry momentum, exchange by which with real particles is responsible for creation of all known fundamental forces (more accurately known as fundamental interactions). Virtual photons (which are simply lowest quantum mechanical energy state of photons) are also responsible for spontaneous radiative decay of exited atomic and nuclear states, for the Casimir force, for Van der Vaals bond forces and some other observable phenomena.

Heat can be placed in a special class of energy, which has been "degraded" by giving it access to all parts of a system. While most heat consists of kinetic and potential energies associated with atomic motion, or with certain kinds of radiant energy (i.e., electromagnetic energy with a blackbody spectrum), the energy associated with heat is in a "diffused" and non-direction form, in which the energy has spread out to occupy all of the possible states of a system which can store it. But the amount of useful energy is usually not conserved, since once energy is converted to heat, it loses some of its ability to do work, and therefore its ability to be convertible to other kinds of energy.

Conversion of energy into different forms

As a consequence of energy conservation law, one form of energy can often be readily transformed into another - for instance, a battery converts chemical energy into electrical energy. Similarly, gravitational potential energy is converted into the kinetic energy of moving water (and a turbine) in a dam, which in turn is transformed into electric energy by a generator. Similarly in the case of a chemical explosion energy stored in chemical bonds that may be termed as chemical potential energy is converted to kinetic energy and heat in a very short time. At its highest points the kinetic energy is zero and the gravitational potential energy is at its maximum. At its lowest point the kinetic energy is at its maximum and is equal to the decrease of potential energy. If one unrealistically assumes that there is no friction, the energy will be conserved and the pendulum will continue swinging forever.

In practice, available energy is rarely perfectly conserved when a system changes state; In small systems such the atom or in a vibrating molecule, where there may be no friction associated with the motion of electrons or the mututal vibration of nuclei, the possibility of indefinite motion, with perpetual conversion of kinetic and potential energy, is the case.

While energy in forms other than heat may be freely converted to other forms (including into heat) with efficiency approaching or even equaling 100%, once energy has been converted into heat, there are severe limitations in re-converting this energy into other useful forms, except chemical energy through biological organisms, and efficiency never reaches 100%.

Work

Because energy is defined in terms of work, a definition of work is crucial to the understanding of energy.

Work is a defined as a line integral of force F over distance s:

W = int mathbf{F} cdot mathrm{d}mathbf{s}

The equation above says that the work (W) is equal to the integral of the dot product of the force (mathbf{F}) on a body and the infinitesimal of the body's translation (mathbf{s}).

Depending on the kind of force F involved, work of this force results in a change of the corresponding kind of energy (gravitational, electrostatic, kinetic, etc).

For example, for the gravitational force F=mg acting on mass m, when the mass is elevated from some height h₁ (reference height) to the height h₂, the work done against gravitational potential energy is therefore:

W = mg · -(h₁ –

Other forms of energy are similarly defined via work.

Energy in Society

In the context of society the word energy is synonymous to energy resources, it most often refers to substances like fuels, petroleum products and electric power installations. People often talk about energy crisis and the need to conserve energy, energy4kids.blogspot.com/ something contrary to the principle of energy conservation in natural sciences.

Economics

Production and consumption of energy resources is very important to the global economy. All economic activity requires energy resources, whether to manufacture goods, provide transportation, run computers and other machines, or to grow food to feed workers, or even to harvest new fuels. The progression from animal power to steam power, then the internal combustion engine and electricity, are key elements in the development of modern civilization. Scarcity of cheap fuels is a key concern in future energy development.

Some attempts have been made to define "embodied energy" - the sum total of energy expended to deliver a good or service as it travels through the economy.

Environment

Consumption of energy resources, (e.g. Carbon dioxide is an important greenhouse gas which is thought to be responsible for some fraction of the rapid increase in global warming seen especially temperature records in the 19th century, as compared with tens of thousands of years worth of temperature records which can be read from ice cores taken in artic regions.

Burning fossil fuels for electricity generation also releases trace metals such as beryllium, cadmium, chromium, copper, manganese, mercury, nickel, and silver into the environment, which also act as pollutants. Certain renewable energy technologies do not pollute the environment in the same ways, and therefore can help contribute to a cleaner energy future for the world.www.undp.org/energyandenvironment/ Renewable energy technologies available for electricity production include biofuels, solar power, tidal power, wind turbines, hydroelectric power etc. Many times it is possible to save expenditure on energy without incorporating fresh technology by simple management techniques. www.mepol.org/site180.php Most often energy management is the practice of using energy more efficiently by eliminating energy wastage or to balance justifiable energy demand with appropriate energy supply.

Politics

Since energy plays an essential role in industrial societies, the ownership and control of energy resources plays an increasing role in politics at the national level.

The strategic control of international energy resources has been cited by some as a cause of the Iraq War.www.thepeakist.com/oil-and-empire-the-backstory-to-the-invasion-of-iraq/ Oil and Empire - the backstory to the invasion of Iraq

Production

Producing energy to sustain the social needs of all human beings is an essential social activity. While most of the effort in this direction is limited towards increasing the production of electricity and oil, newer ways of producing usable energy resources from the available energy resources are being explored. Research is underway to explore enzymatic decomposition of biomass www.research.vt.edu/energy/reshydro.html and or water.

Similar is the case with many other forms of conventional energy resources.

References

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