In this video we are going to understand how
electricity reaches our home?
You really don’t have to be an electrical
engineer to understand this, if you have curiosity
to know how electricity reaches our home,
then this video is for you.
This video is going to be very basic stuff,
which can be understand by everyone.
So, to know how electricity reaches our home,
I recommend you to watch the video.
Electricity reaches in our home in three phases
namely, Generation, transmission and distribution.
Let’s start with phase one, Generation.
First step to get electricity in our home
is to generate it.
And the place where it is generated is called
as “generating station or power station.”
Power stations can be of different types like,
thermal power station, hydro power station,
nuclear power station, solar power station,
etc.
Job of all of these power stations is to generate
huge amount of electricity.
In thermal power station, electricity is generated
by the heat produced by the combustion of
coal, oil or natural gas.
In Hydro power stations, energy of moving
water is converted into electrical energy
by means of huge hydraulic turbines which
is coupled with generators.
In nuclear power station, electricity is generated
from the heat released by nuclear reaction.
In solar power station, electricity is generated
by converting solar energy into electrical
energy.
Solar energy, wind energy, biomass and hydro
all these sources are know as green sources
of electricity, as they do not cause any pollution.
These generating stations are located far
away from the consumer, as they should be
located near the primary energy source like
water, coal, etc.
Also, these generating stations requires huge
amount of land.
For example, Kurnool ultra mega solar power
plant is spread over a Total area of 5932
acres!
And because of these reasons such power stations
has to be far away from the ultimate end user.
As the power stations are far away form the
end user, electricity needs to be transmitted
to the desired locations.
And which takes us to the phase two of journey
of electricity to our home, which is Transmission.
Power stations generates electricity at lower
voltage, but while transmitting electricity,
the voltage is stepped up using a step up
transformer, as delivering power at higher
voltage offers more advantages over smaller
voltage.
One of this advantage includes low losses
while transmitting electricity, and this saves
huge amount of money.
Then once the voltage is steeped up, these
conductors carries electricity to the next
level with the help of these kind of giant
towers.
Job of these towers is to support the current
carrying conductors and also to maintain a
safe clearance between ground and conductors
and also between the parallel conductors.
You might have seen such kind of thing while
travelling.
This is called as substation.
The function of substation is to either step
up the voltage or step it down.
It is also helps in combining the power coming
from two different generating station, which
further increase the reliability of complete
system.
Substation consist of transformers which helps
in stepping up or steeping down the voltage,
it also has protective devices like circuit
breaker to protect the system in case of fault,
it also has measuring devices like voltage
and current transformer which measures the
voltage & current respectively.
Substation plays a very important role in
both the phase I.e. transmission and distribution.
Power is transferred to a long distance in
transmission phase.
But when it reaches to the destination, voltage
needs to be stepped down because power with
this much high voltage cannot be delivered
to the end customer.
So, this brings us to the last phase of journey
of electricity to our home which is Distribution.
High voltage power coming from the transmission
phase, cannot be delivered directly to the
end user.
Voltage level must be lowered before delivering
the power to end consumer, and this is done
by a distribution substation.
In Distribution substation voltage is stepped
down to much lower value.
After this, low voltage power is carried by
the distribution lines to a distribution pole
or DP in short.
This distribution pole has a transformer which
further lowers the voltage and this power
is now carried by these lines which helps
us to get the electricity in our home.
So to summarise how we get electricity in
our home, first step is to generate electricity
using different power stations, then this
power is transferred to a long distance via
transmission lines, which is the second step,
then power is steeped down in distribution
phase which is the last step, and this low
voltage power is now ready to get into our
home.
