People use large increments of electricity every day, but it’s could be doubtful that anyone ever thinks of how much energy is used to transfer the solution from power plants straight to the outlets in your home. In order to answer how much energy is lost during its travel, we need to break it up step by step, which consists of turning raw materials into electricity, moving electricity to your neighborhood, and finally sending that electricity throughout the walls of your home.
Step 1: Creating Electricity
Power plants— coal, natural gas, petroleum, or nuclear—all work on the same general principle. Energy-dense material is burned in order to release heat, which boils water into steam, causing the spin of a turbine, and then finally generates the electricity. The thermodynamic limits of this process call for only two-thirds of the energy within the raw materials that actually make it onto the grid in the form of electricity.
Step 2: Moving Electricity—Transmission and Distribution
A vast portion of us don’t live right beside a power plant, so by all means, we have to somehow transfer electricity into our homes. This part of the process starts with transmission.
Transmission
First and foremost, electricity travels on long-distance, high-voltage transmission lines. These lines can stretch for miles across the nation. The voltage in these lines can measure up to thousands of volts. These lines are nothing to be messed with. The high count of voltage can be explained by Ohm’s law: Losses scale with the square of a wire’s current. The square factor calls for a tiny jump within the current, which can cause a big bump in losses. Sustaining high voltage allows us to keep currents and losses low. When that electricity is lost it turns into heat. Electrons move back and forth, eventually crashing into each other. These collisions warm up power lines and the air around them.
Distribution
High-voltage transmission lines are big, tall, expensive, and potentially dangerous, therefore, they are only used in the occasion where electricity needs to travel long distances. At substations near your neighborhood, electricity is stepped down onto smaller, lower-voltage power lines, such as the ones on wooden poles. Next, transformers step the voltage down to even less, around 120 volts, to make it safe to enter your house. In most cases, smaller power lines call for mean bigger relative losses. Even though electricity may travel much farther on high-voltage lines, losses are low, around two percent. And although your electricity may travel for a few miles or less on low-voltage distribution, losses are still high, around four percent.
Transmission and distribution losses vary in different countries. Some countries, such as India, have losses up to 30 percent.
Step 3: Using Electricity Inside Your Home
Utility companies are meticulous when it comes to measuring and tracking losses from the power plant to your meter. These companies are obliged to because every bit they lose eats into their bottom line. Once you’ve purchased electricity and it enters your home, we lose track of the losses.
Your home and the wires inside your walls mimic the structure of a black box, where figuring how much electricity has been lost becomes tricky. If you want to find out exactly how much electricity gets lost within your home, you’ll either need to estimate it by utilizing a circuit diagram of your house or by measuring by placing meters on all of your home’s appliances.
The Potential for Diminishing Transmission and Distribution Losses
As of lately, grid engineers are working on technologies, such as superconducting materials, that could essentially reduce electricity transmission and distribution losses to zero. For now, the cost of these technologies is much higher than the money lost by utility companies throughout their leaky power lines. A more economical solution to reduce transmission and distribution is to be able to target change for how and when we use power. Utilities are constantly experimenting with ways to spread out electricity and to use it more evenly to minimize loss during transfer.
Get Started With ISIEM International, Inc for Our Electricity Services
Here at ISIEM International, Inc, we have a team of professionals with years of experience that has helped us to better understands everyone’s electrical systems and needs. Contact us to learn more about our electrical studies, electrical testing, and much more.