Tag: electric power distribution

How does electricity get from the generating station to the outlet in my living room? — JJ, Arlington, MA

The generating station uses a large generator to transfer energy from a giant turbine to an electric current flowing through a coil of wire. Current from this generating coil then flows through the primary coil of a huge transformer, where it transfers its energy to the magnetic core of the transformer. The current then returns to the generator to obtain more energy.

The magnetic core of the transformer transfers its energy to a second current—one that is passing through the secondary coil of the transformer. Because this current consists of far fewer electric charges per second, each charge receives a very large amount of energy. This large energy per charge gives the current a high voltage and it flows very easily through a high voltage transmission line. Because the amount of power that a wire loses is proportional to the square of the current passing through it, this high-voltage, low-current electricity wastes very little power in the transmission line on its way across country to your city. When the current reaches your city, it passes through another transformer and its energy is transferred to a third current. The cross country current then returns through the transmission line to the original power station to obtain more energy from the first transformer.

This third current involves more charges per second, so each charge carries less energy and the voltage is lower. This medium voltage electricity travels to your neighborhood before passing through a final transformer. This final transformer is probably either a gray metal can on a utility pole or a green box on a nearby lawn. In passing through the final transformer, the current transfers its energy to a current which then enters your home. This last current delivers energy to your appliances and lights and then returns to the final transformer to obtain more energy.

How much does it cost to run a regular 60 to 100 watt light bulb per minute or per hour? — JM, Smithfield, ME

Electricity typically costs about 7 cents per kilowatt-hour. Over the course of an hour, a 100-watt light bulb will use 100 watt-hours or 0.1 kilowatt-hours, at a cost of about 0.7 cents. That’s about 0.012 cents per minute.

Does an electric blanket produce enough EMF to affect the body and possible increase the risk of cancer? – FL

The electromagnetic fields (EMF) produced by the currents in an electric blanket are very weak and it takes a pretty sensitive electronic device to detect them. You body is not nearly so sensitive and I still haven’t seen any credible explanation for how these fields could cause any injury to biological tissue. I strongly suspect that all the concern about EMF is just hysteria brought about by a few epidemiological flukes or mistakes.

How dangerous is the radiation from high voltage power lines? – K

Probably not very dangerous. The radiation itself is so weak that it can’t cause significant heating in your body (as the microwaves used in diathermy treatment do) and so low frequency that it can’t do chemical damage (as the X-rays from a CT scan do). The only possible source of trouble is the small electric and magnetic fields from the power lines and there is still no credible evidence that these affect biological tissue. Moreover, there are sound physical arguments why those fields should not be able to affect biological tissue. Only in rare cases of an organ that is devoted to sensing magnetic fields (e.g., in migratory birds) is there any reasonable interaction between tissue and small magnetic fields.

Is it true that Tesla invented a way to send electrical power without the use of power lines? If so, how? – BS

Yes. Tesla found that the alternating electromagnetic fields around a large high frequency transformer could propel currents through wires or lamps that were located at a moderate distance from the transformer. But this technique of using the alternating fields near a transformer to provide power aren’t very practical—there is too much power wasted through radiation or in heating things that aren’t meant to be heated.

How far can electricity be transferred over wires from a power station before the loss factor is too great? — JD, New York NY

That depends on the electricity’s voltage. The transmission lines carrying the electricity are important parts of the overall electric circuit. They waste electric power as they carry current and the amount of power they waste is proportional to the square of the current they carry. The purpose of high voltage transmission lines is to send as small a current as possible across the countryside so that the wires waste as little power as possible. This reduction in current is possible if each electric charge moving in that current carries a large amount of energy—the current must be one that consists of high voltage charges. In short, higher voltage transmission lines employ smaller currents and waste less power than lower voltage transmission lines.

When Thomas Edison set out to electrify New York City, he used direct current of the highest practical household voltage. Nonetheless, his relatively low voltage power transmission lines wasted so much power that he had to scatter generating plants throughout the city so that no home was far from a power plant. But when George Westinghouse and Nicola Tesla realized that using alternating current and transformers to temporarily convert the household power to high voltages and small currents, they were able to send power long distances without wasting electricity. That realization eventually destroyed Edison’s direct current electric system and gave us the modern alternating current system. It’s now common to send electric power several hundred miles through high voltage transmission lines. At those distances, perhaps half the power is lost en route. I doubt that transmission of power more than 1,000 miles is practical.

Do sparks generated by Tesla coils shock humans? If not, why not? – AW

A Tesla coil is radio-frequency transformer that produces small currents of very high-energy electric charges. A radio frequency alternating current passes through the primary coil of this transformer and it induces a current in the secondary coil of the transformer. The frequency of the alternating current must be extremely high because there is no iron in the core of the transformer to store energy during a cycle, so that each cycle must be very brief. Because the alternating current flowing out of the secondary coil of the transformer has a very high frequency, it travels over the surface of a conductor, rather than through its center. Thus when you allow that current to pass through you, it goes along your skin and not through your body. As a result, you barely feel its passage except perhaps as surface heating (however, it can cause what is called an “RF burn” in some cases.) Also, the current from a typical Tesla coil is very small so it would barely be noticeable even if it went through your body.

How does the power/frequency of the earth’s magnetic field compare to the magnetic fields of electrical appliances? — MC, Independence, KA

Although I haven’t been able to find detailed lists of the magnetic fields near common appliances (such lists do exist), those fields are unlikely to be stronger than the earth’s own magnetic field. That’s because the magnetic fields in most appliances are created by electric currents and you must be quite near a relatively large current before the magnetic field of that current exceeds 0.5 gauss, the strength of the earth’s magnetic field. But while an appliance’s magnetic field is likely to be no greater than that of the earth, the appliance’s magnetic field does change with time. It reverses each time that the alternating current from the power line reverses. In the United States, that’s 120 reversals per second (60 full cycles of reversal, over and back, each second).

What are watts and amps? – NS

The watt is the standard unit of power—that is, it’s the way in which we measure how much energy is being transferred to or from sometime each second. 1 watt is equivalent to 1 joule of energy per second. A 100 watt light bulb consumes 100 joules of electric energy each second. Anytime energy moves from one place to another, you can determine how much power is flowing. For example, the food energy in a jelly donut is about 1 million joules, so if you eat 1 jelly donut in 100 seconds, you receive 10,000 watts of power. Since your body only consumes about 100 watts of power while you are resting, it will take you 10,000 seconds to use up all that food energy.

The amp (or ampere) is the standard unit of electric current—that is, its the way in which we measure how many electric charges flow past a certain point each second. 1 amp is equivalent to 1 coulomb of electric charge per second. Since 1 coulomb of electric charge is the charge on 6,240,000,000,000,000,000 protons, even a current of only 1 amp means that a great many electric charges are passing each second. The current passing through a 100-watt light bulb is roughly 1 amp on average, while the current used in starting a car is about 100 amps.

How do power lines work and what is the purpose of all the electrical things you see behind the fences with signs saying “Warning: High Voltage”?

Electric power is distributed over long distance using high voltages and relatively low currents. Since the amount of power that flows through a wire is equal to the product of its voltage (the amount of energy carried by each unit of electric charge) and its current (the number of units of electric charge that flow through the wire each second), the electric company can distribute its power either as a large current at low voltages or a small current at high voltages. But it turns out that the amount of power that’s wasted by electricity as it flows through a wire is proportional to the square of the current in that wire. Thus the more current that flows through a wire, the more power that wire turns into thermal energy (or heat). To minimize this energy loss, the power company uses transformers to convert the electricity to small currents at very high voltages for transmission cross country. Near each community, there is then a power substation at which this very high voltage power is converted to lower voltage forms. Even in neighborhoods, they use medium currents at moderately high voltages to avoid power wastage. Only in the vicinity of your home is the electricity finally converted by transformers to a large current at low voltage for safe delivery to your appliances. You’ve probably seen those final transformers as the gray oil-drum sized units on utility poles or the green boxes on front lawns. But despite all this effort to minimize power loss, something like 6% of the electric power generated in this country is lost in the delivery process.