Why electricity is transmitted at high voltage?
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| Why electricity is transmitted at high voltage? |
The discovery of electricity is one of the major achievements of the human race. The development we have achieved today was not possible without electricity as major industries run on electricity. But even after the discovery of electricity and its successful use, there was a major obstacle. And that obstacle was its transmission to different regions of the country as it was neither economical nor possible to construct an electricity generation centre everywhere in the country. First of all Thomas Edison invented DC motor and hence Direct Current. Though it was a major discovery but it was not economical to transmit it over long distances. Then comes the genius of Nikola Tesla who invented AC Motor and hence Alternating Current. With this, the transmission of electricity becomes cheaper even over long distances.
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| Why electricity is transmitted at high voltage? |
It was just a little history of electricity. But you may have noticed that to transmit electricity to long distances in your area, high voltage lines are installed. You might have even noticed the huge sounds these high voltage lines produce. But why transmission is done at such a high voltage?
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| Why electricity is transmitted at high voltage? |
Now we need to understand that the electric wires of huge length are used to transmit electric power to different areas. And the power that is transmitted from an electric station or powerhouse, must reach the destination with minimum loss. Now electric power is the product of voltage and current. So the same amount of power can be transmitted either at high voltage and low current or at low voltage and high current.
But we can't transmit power at high current. It is due to the reason that currently has the property of producing heat and sound. Thus some amount of power is wasted in this process. Now more is the current, more heat and sound would be produced hence more is the loss. Thus the power that would reach destination will be a lot lesser than transmitted from the powerhouse.
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| Why electricity is transmitted at high voltage? |
Thus we choose another alternative and transmit power at high voltage and thus low current. Though there is still some loss in this method too, it is negligible. Moreover, to transmit power at high current, we need to use thicker wires. And these thicker and weighty wires need strong and powerful electric poles to support these wires at many places, which is not economical. Thus we always transmit huge power at high voltage and low current.
Do you know that electricity travels at the speed of 10776167.4Km/hour.
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