TEJAS DHAGE

ELECTRICITY SUPPLY
Electricity comes to homes and workplaces through a huge network of
power stations and cables. When the supply fails, we wonder how we ever
managed without it. But electricity is not a source of energy, only a way of
moving it around. Most of the energy comes from oil, gas, coal, or nuclear
fuels. These sources will not last for ever. In future, more of our electricity
will come from renewable sources, such as sunlight and wind.

HOW ELECTRICITY DELIVERS ENERGY

POWER STATION
At a power station, heat from fuel or a nuclear reactor boils water to make
steam. This goes through turbines – machines in which steam rushes past
fanlike blades and makes them spin. The turbines turn huge generators,
each able to produce enough power for 20 electric trains. The steam is
cooled in big towers and turns back into water, which can be reused.

PYLONS
Electricity leaves the power station through metal cables on tall pylons.
Power is sent out at a much higher voltage than that used in homes. This is
because the higher the voltage, the lower the current needed for the same
power. Lower currents allow thinner cables, cutting costs, but the high
voltage means that huge insulators are needed for safety.

SUBSTATION
Electricity arriving at a city is not ready to use because its voltage is much
too high. Transformers at substations reduce the voltage. At a big
substation, the voltage is kept quite high because the electricity still has to
travel around the city and to nearby country areas. Smaller, local
substations will finally reduce the voltage down to the level we use in our
homes.
CITIES
Big cities have complex electrical networks with miles of cable and many
substations to deliver power to thousands of buildings. Some cities have
overhead cables (such as Tokyo, Japan, where an earthquake could
damage underground cables). In most cities, however, power travels in
heavy cables that carry large electric currents under the streets.

IN THE HOME
When we switch on a cooker or heater in the home, the heat that became
electricity at the power station is released again. It can even boil water,
just as it did before. But there is a price to pay for the convenience of
electricity. Only about a third of the heat from the fuel used to make
electricity actually gets to our homes. The rest is wasted or lost on its
journey.

NETWORK CONTROL CENTRE

Demand for electricity varies greatly from minute to minute. As electricity
cannot easily be stored, supply networks must be ready to switch power to
where it is needed at short notice. Control centres ensure that generators
are started and running by the time a predictable surge occurs – for
example, at the end of a television programme.

SOLAR POWER
At a solar power station, large mirrors are used to focus sunlight on to a
tank of water. The water boils, and the steam that is given off drives an
electric generator. Just one square metre (10 sq ft) of sunlight delivers
enough power to run a one-bar electric fire. If we could build more solar
power stations and capture enough of the Sun’s energy as solar power, the
world’s future electricity supply would be more secure.
Electric Supply System
January 2, 2019 by Electrical4U
Previously there was very little demand for electrical energy. A
single small electrical generating unit could meet the localized
demand. Nowadays the demand for electrical energy is
tremendously increasing along with the modernization of human
lifestyles. To meet this increasing electrical load demand, we have to
establish quite a large number of big power plants. But from the
economic point of view, this is not always possible to build a power
plant nearer to the load centers. We define load centers as the places
where the density of consumers or connected loads is quite high
compared to other parts of the country. It is economical to establish a
power plant near the natural source of energy like coal, gases, and
water etc. Because of that and for many other factors, we have to
construct an electrical generating station often far away from load
centers.
Thus we have to establish electrical network systems to bring the
generated electrical energy from power generating station to the
consumer ends. Electricity generated in the generating station riches
to the consumers through the systems which we can divide into two
main parts referred as transmission and distribution. We call the
network through which the consumers get electricity from the source
as electrical supply system. An electrical supply system has three
main components, the generating stations, the transmission lines and
distribution systems. Power generating stations produce electricity at
a comparatively lower voltage level. Producing electricity at lower
voltage level is economical in many aspects.
The step-up transformers connected at the beginning of the
transmission lines, increase the voltage level of the power. Electrical
transmission systems then transmit this higher voltage electrical
power to the possible nearest zone of load centres. Transmitting
electrical power at higher voltage levels is advantageous in many
aspects. High voltage transmission lines consist of overhead or/and
underground electrical conductors. The step-down transformers
connected at the end of the transmission lines decrease the voltage of
electricity to the desired low values for distribution purposes. The
distribution systems then distribute the electricity to various
consumers according to their required voltagelevels.
We usually adopt AC system for generation, transmission and
distribution purposes. For Ultra High Voltage transmission we often
use DC transmission system. The transmission and distribution both
networks can be either overhead or underground. As the
underground system is much more expensive than an overhead
system, the latter is preferable wherever possible from the economic
point of view. We use three phase 3 wire system for AC transmission
and three phase 4 wire system for AC distribution.

We can divide both transmission and distribution systems into two

parts, primary transmission and secondary transmission, primary
distribution and secondary distribution. It is a generalized view of an
electrical network. We should note that all the transmission
distribution systems may not have these four stages of the electrical
supply system. As per requirement of the system, there may be
many networks which may not have a secondary transmission or
secondary distribution even in many cases of localized electrical
supply system the entire transmission system can be absent. In those
localized electrical supply system generators directly distribute the
power to different consumption points.