What is conventional source of energy?

The conventional sources of energy are generally non-renewable sources of energy, which are being used since a long time. These sources of energy are being used extensively in such a way that their known reserves have been depleted to a great extent.

At the same time it is becoming increasingly difficult to discover and exploit their new deposits. It is envisaged at known deposits of petroleum in our country will get exhausted by the few decades and coal reserves are expected to last for another hundred years. The coal, petroleum, natural gas and electricity are conventional sources of energy.

Coal:

Coal is one of the most important sources of energy and is being used for various proposes such as heating of housed, as fuel for boilers and steam engines and for generation of electricity by thermal plants.

Coal has also become a precious source of production of chemical of industrial importance coal is and will continue to be the mainstay of power generation in India. It constitutes about 70% of total commercial energy consumed in the country.

Oil and Natural Gas:

Like coal, petroleum is also derived from plants and also from dead animals that lived in remote past. Natural gas has also been produced in the Earth’s curst by the similar process as petroleum and this is also a combustible fuel.

The exploitation of oil on a large scale started after 1960, the year when the first commercial well is reported to have come into existence. In India, efforts made by the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation since the late 1950s have led to the identification of a number of oil and gas deposits both offshore and onshore.

The onshore fields were mainly discovered in the Mumbai, Gujarat, Assam and Arunachal Pradesh and the offshore fields in the sea are the notably Mumbai High fields such as North and South Basin and South Tapti. Oil and natural gas has also been discovered in the Godavari Basin on the East Coast and the Barmer district of Rajasthan. The new exploration strategy has been developed which places emphasis on intensive exploration, survey and drilling in order to add to petroleum reserves and to argument production.

Natural gas is also emerging as an important source of energy in India’s commercial energy scene in view of large reserves of gas that have been established in the country, particularly, in South Bassein off west coast of India. Natural gas in also making significant contribution to the household sector.

About 30% of the country’s output of LPG comes from this source. About three- fourths as the total gas comes from Mumbai high and rest is obtained from Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Assam Tamil Nadu and Rajasthan. The Oil and Natural Gas Corporation has made a significant hydro carbon finding and Reliance Industries struck gas off the Orissa coast in Bay of Bengal.

Electricity:

It is another conventional source of power, which is playing a barometer of a nation’s economic well-being. Availability of abundant electricity means unrestricted growth of industries, transport and agriculture.

There are various sources from which electricity is being produced. Depending upon raw material used, there are three types of electricity (1) Hydroelectricity (ii) Thermal electricity (steam, gas, oil) (iii) Nuclear electricity.