Evolution of Electrical energy

The fundamental principle of electricity generation was discovered during the 1820s and early 1830s by the British scientist Michael Faraday. His basic method is still used today: electric current is generated by the movement of a loop of wire or disc of copper between the poles of a magnet.

Electricity is most often generated at a power station by electromechanical generators, primarily driven by heat engines fueled by chemical combustion or nuclear fission but also by other means such as the kinetic energy of flowing water and wind. There are many other technologies that can be and are used to generate electricity such as solar photovoltaics and geothermal power.

Mathematically, electric current is defined as the rate of flow of charge through the cross-section of a conductor.

Electricity is Electrical charges moving through a wire.

E = QV
Where, Q is charge

V is the potential difference.

 

Units of Electrical Energy

The basic unit of electrical energy is the joule or watt-second. Electrical energy is said to be one joule when one ampere of current flows through the circuit for a second when the potential difference of one volt is applied across it. The commercial unit of electrical energy is the kilowatt-hour (kWh) which is also known as the Board of trade unit (B.O.T).
1 kwh = 1000 × 60 × 60   watt-second
1 kwh = 36 × 10⁵     Ws or Joules
Generally, one kwh is called one unit.

Electrical Energy into Mechanical Energy

Electrical energy can be converted into other forms of energy like heat energy, light energy, motion etc. The best-known examples are:

• Fan: The motor in Fan converts electrical energy into mechanical energy
• Bulb: Here the electrical energy is converted into light energy.

Electricity travels at the speed of light that is more than 186,000 miles per second.

Electric power Definition – It is the rate at which work is done or energy is transformed in an electrical circuit. Simply put, it is a measure of how much energy is used in a span of time.

In physics, the rate of transfer of electrical energy by an electrical circuit per unit time is called electrical power.

P=VI                watt or Joule per second.

Where, V is the potential difference (volts),

I is the electric current (ampere).

 

We talked about the energy that is dissipated due to the heating up of the conductor.

But we know the formula for power is given by P = I V

 according to Ohm’s law, V = IR. Substituting we have,

P = I²R

It is this power that is responsible for heating up the coil of a bulb, which gives out heat and light.

Alternating Current (AC) is a type of electrical current, in which the direction of the flow of electrons switches back and forth at regular intervals or cycles. Current flowing in power lines and normal household electricity that comes from a wall outlet is alternating current. The standard current used in the U.S. is 60 cycles per second (i.e. a frequency of 60 Hz); in Europe and most other parts of the world it is 50 cycles per second (i.e. a frequency of 50 Hz.).

Direct current (DC) is an electrical current that flows consistently in one direction. The current that flows in a flashlight or another appliance running on batteries is a direct current.

One advantage of alternating current is that it is relatively cheap to change the voltage of the current. Furthermore, the inevitable loss of energy that occurs when current is carried over long distances is far smaller with the alternating current than with the direct current.

Examples of alternating current

To illustrate these concepts, consider a 230 V AC mains supply used in many countries around the world. It is so-called because its root mean square value is 230 V. This means that the time-averaged power delivered is equivalent to the power delivered by a DC voltage of 230 V. To determine the peak voltage (amplitude), we can rearrange the above equation to:  For 230 V AC, the peak voltage    is, therefore,, which is about 325 V. During the course of one cycle the voltage rises from zero to 325 V, falls through zero to −325 V, and returns to zero.

 

For decades, alternating current (AC) had the distinct advantage over direct current (DC; a steady flow of electric charge in one direction) of being able to transmit power over large distances without great loss of energy to resistance. The power transmitted is equal to the current times the voltage; however, the power lost is equal to the resistance times the square of the current. Changing voltages was very difficult with the first DC electric power grids in the late 19th century. Because of the power loss, these grids used low voltages to maintain high current and thus could only transmit usable power over short distances. DC power transmission was soon supplanted by AC systems that transmit power at very high voltages (and correspondingly low current) and easily use transformers to change the voltage. Present AC systems transmit power from generators at hundreds of thousands of volts and use transformers to lower the voltage to 220 volts (as in much of the world) for individual customers.

Alternating current is used to transmit information, as in the cases of telephone and cable television. Information signals are carried over a wide range of AC frequencies. POTS telephone signals have a frequency of about 3 kHz, close to the baseband audio frequency. Cable television and other cable-transmitted information currents may alternate at frequencies of tens to thousands of megahertz. These frequencies are similar to the electromagnetic wave frequencies often used to transmit the same types of information over the air.

Alternating current systems can use transformers to change the voltage from low to a high level and back, allowing generation and consumption at low voltages but transmission, possibly over great distances, at high voltage, with savings in the cost of conductors and energy losses.

The three engineers ZBD transformers:

The Ganz factory in 1884 shipped the world's first five high-efficiency AC transformers. This first unit had been manufactured to the following specifications: 1,400 W, 40 Hz, 120:72 V, 11.6:19.4 A, ratio 1.67:1, one-phase, shell form.

 In early 1885, the three engineers also eliminated the problem of eddy current losses with the invention of the lamination of electromagnetic cores.

The AC power system was developed and adopted rapidly after 1886 due to its ability to distribute electricity efficiently over long distances, overcoming the limitations of the direct current system. In 1886, the ZBD engineers designed the world's first power station that used AC generators to power a parallel-connected common electrical network, the steam-powered Rome-Cerchi power plant. The reliability of the AC technology received impetus after the Ganz Works electrified a large European metropolis: Rome in 1886.

In 1888, alternating current systems gained further viability with the introduction of a functional AC motor, something these systems had lacked up till then. The design of, an induction motor, was independently invented by Galileo Ferraris and Nikola Tesla (with Tesla's design being licensed by Westinghouse in the US). This design was further developed into the modern practical three-phase form.

            The Ames Hydroelectric Generating Plant and the original Niagara Falls Adams Power plant were among the first hydroelectric alternating current power plants. The first long-distance transmission of single-phase electricity was from a hydroelectric generating plant in Oregon at Willamette Falls which in 1890 sent power fourteen miles downriver to downtown Portland for street lighting. In 1891, a second transmission system was installed in Telluride Colorado. The San Antonio Canyon Generator was the third commercial single-phase hydroelectric AC power plant in the United States to provide long-distance electricity. It was completed on December 31, 1892, by Almarian William Decker to provide power to the city of Pomona, California, which was 14 miles away. In 1893, he designed the first commercial three-phase power plant in the United States using alternating current—the hydroelectric Mill Creek No. 1 Hydroelectric Plant near California. Decker’s design incorporated a 10 kV three-phase transmission and established the standards for the complete system of generation, transmission, and motors used today. 

Nikola Tesla, Serbian American inventor, and engineer discovered and patented the rotating magnetic field, the basis of most alternating-current machinery. He also developed the three-phase system of electric power transmission. He immigrated to the United States in 1884 and sold the patent rights to his system of alternating-current dynamos, transformers, and motors to George Westinghouse. In 1891 he invented the Tesla coil, an induction coil widely used in radio technology.

Serbian-American engineer and physicist Nikola Tesla (1856-1943) made dozens of breakthroughs in the production, transmission, and application of electric power. He invented the first alternating current (AC) motor and developed AC generation and transmission technology.

Tesla was from a family of Serbian origin. His father was an Orthodox priest; his mother was unschooled but highly intelligent. As he matured, he displayed remarkable imagination and creativity as well as a poetic touch.

Training for an engineering career, he attended the Technical University at Graz, Austria, and the University of Prague. At Graz, he first saw the Gramme dynamo, which operated as a generator and, when reversed, became an electric motor, and he conceived a way to use alternating current to advantage. Later, at Budapest, he visualized the principle of the rotating magnetic field and developed plans for an induction motor that would become his first step toward the successful utilization of alternating current. In 1882 Tesla went to work in Paris for the Continental Edison Company, and, while on assignment to Strassburg in 1883, he constructed, after work hours, his first induction motor. Tesla sailed for America in 1884, arriving in New York with four cents in his pocket, a few of his own poems, and calculations for a flying machine. He first found employment with Thomas Edison, but the two inventors were far apart in background and methods, and their separation was inevitable.

In May 1888 George Westinghouse, head of the Westinghouse Electric Company in Pittsburgh, bought the patent rights to Tesla’s polyphase system of alternating-current dynamos, transformers, and motors. The transaction precipitated a titanic power struggle between Edison’s direct-current systems and the Tesla-Westinghouse alternating-current approach, which eventually won out.