- Electrostatics
- Electric Fields And Potential
- Capacitance
- Current and Resistance
- Electromotive Force And Current
- DC Circuits
- Magnetic Materials
- Magnetism
- Inductance
- Induction
- Complex Circuits
- Semiconductors And Tubes
- Transmission Lines and Antennas
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Power Loss in Transmission Lines
Purpose:
To Illustrate how power loss in transmission lines decreases with voltage and the effects of this on transmission line design.
Procedure:
The setup consists of two 12V 80W bulbs, three transformers which can step up or down between 12V and 120V and two sets of long connecting wires as shown below.
One suggested procedure is as follows:
- Connect the nearest light bulb to the 12V output on the transformer connected to the line voltage as shown below. The bulb will light brightly.
- Now connect the heavy wires between the 12V output and the far bulb.
- This works well, but running thick wire all over the country would be prohibitively expensive so try to do the same thing with the thin wires.
- Since the resistance of the thin wires is greater than that of the thick wires, more power is lost in the transmission and the bulb is dimly lit. Now, ideally we want to deliver approx 6.5A at 12V (80W) to the bulb while loosing as little power in the line as we can. Since the resistance of the line is fixed, our only hope is to reduce the current we need to push through the line and therefore reduce the power lost in the line. If we step up the voltage to 120V during the transmission, we only have to send .65A through the transmission line and then step back down to ~12V with enough current to light the bulb brightly.
Comments:
If you have a suggestion for the use of this demo which might benefit others, you can enter it below.
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