Internal combustion engine based generators aren’t fancy steam engines either - however, they have a lot in common still. It’s still just a way to move around the spinny bits of an alternator/generator/dynamo/whatever
There’s one more outlier though which is Electrochemical cell, like galvanic element or voltaic pile
It was used around 1800 as a major electricity source, but I guess it quickly became uneconomical in 1866 or sth when the dynamo was invented.
Edit: wait yes, it actually says this in the second paragraph of the linked article:
The entire 19th-century electrical industry was powered by batteries related to Volta’s (e.g. the Daniell cell and Grove cell) until the advent of the dynamo (the electrical generator) in the 1870s.
Hydro, wind, solar, and wave/tide energy capture are not.
The crazy part is photovoltaics are the only power source that doesn’t spin something to make electricity. Truly an outlier.
Except the ones that are. (Concentrated solar power)
…and the fancy steam engine version of solar is probably greener to build that photovoltaics, since it’s basically just a boiler and some mirrors.
Internal combustion engine based generators aren’t fancy steam engines either - however, they have a lot in common still. It’s still just a way to move around the spinny bits of an alternator/generator/dynamo/whatever
There’s one more outlier though which is Electrochemical cell, like galvanic element or voltaic pile
It was used around 1800 as a major electricity source, but I guess it quickly became uneconomical in 1866 or sth when the dynamo was invented.
Edit: wait yes, it actually says this in the second paragraph of the linked article:
Great call! Completely forgot about batteries and potato power sources!
Not entirely true, there is the thermoelectric generator too. Though it’s not very practical