When you look at those overhead power lines, you are looking at wires that carry tens of thousands of volts through them. One reason that they carry so much voltage is that it is more efficient to carry high voltage over long distances. The electrons in the current will bounce around each other and make it so that there is some power loss, generally not a significant loss, but some. Another reason is that although a home generally runs on 110v or 220v, factories and other industrial settings generally have heavy equipment that uses more than just 110 or 220 volts. It's easier for the power lines to carry the higher voltages that can be transformed down to lower voltages than it would be for them to carry lower voltages that have to be stepped up to a higher voltage.
Electrical Transformers
These transformers have nothing to do with the toys you played with when you were a child. What they do is take a higher voltage of energy and transform it so that it becomes a lower voltage. There are transformers that are connected from the very high voltage power carrier lines to lower the voltage down to a series of lower powered wires. For example, a carrier line can come from the power company out to the larger grid. At that point, a transformer may be put in place at a junction running towards residential settings so that the power is more easily used in a home, while power going towards industrial zones may not be changed immediately.
How Transfomers Work
Transfomers change the voltage of an alternating electrical current by the use of electromagnetic induction. The way that this works is that inside the transformer there is a wire that has been wrapped around an iron bar. Near it, but not touching it, is another iron bar that has another wire wrapped around it. Electricity creates a magnetic field, which then, in turn, will produce electricity. The current that runs through the first coil of wires will create an electromagnetic field and produce electricity in the second coil, even though they are not even touching. The way that the transformer alters the voltage is easy. If the first wire is wrapped around the bar more times than the second wire is wrapped around its bar, then the voltage that the second wire carries will be lower. For example, if wire 1 has 5000 volts and 10 wraps and wire 2 only has 5 wraps, then it will carry 2500 volts.
Transformers are used in all kinds of settings, from a home to industrial settings, where a factory may have their own transformers installed to make sure they can have the right voltage of power for their uses. For more information, check with a company like Solomon Corporation today.
Share24 June 2017
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