Electricity in the Home

Topic 7
Transmission of Electricity
Alternating current for use in homes and industry is produced by large
electric generators in power stations. Transformers are used to change the voltage for
either transmission or use.
● Step-up transformers increase the voltage for transmission
● Step-down transformers decrease the voltage for use
Transformers

Transformers function by using

electromagnetic induction. Current
flowing through the primary coil
generates a magnetic field, which induces
a current in the secondary coil. The ratio
number of coils in each determines if the
voltage is increased or decreased.
Power in the Home
● Power is supplied to home from the grid through a step-down transformer
● Circuit breakers and fuses act as safety devices that break the circuit if it becomes
too hot
Measuring Electric Power
Power is defined as energy per unit time and is measured in joules (J) per second (s) or
Watts (W), electric power is the the amount of electric energy that is converted into
other forms of energy every second or the amount of electric energy that is transferred
from one place to another in a certain amount of time.
Calculating Power
Electric power is not usually calculated directly by measuring energy and time. It is
much more common to measure the voltage and current in a circuit and use these
quantities to calculate power.
Power (in watts) = Current (in amps) X Voltage (in volts)
P = IV
This equation can be manipulated to determine the current or the voltage of the
circuit.
Sample Problems
A current of 13.6 A passes through an electric baseboard heater when it is connected to
a 110 V wall outlet. What is the power of the heater?

A 50 W light bulb is connected to a 12 V source, what is the current through the bulb?
Paying for Electricity
Producing electricity is expensive and so
consumers of electricity must pay the cost
of the energy that they use. All houses
have a power meter, more modern ones
are digital

Each dial represents one digit in a

five-digit number. When a dial pointer is
between numbers, the lower number is
recorded

So this meter indicates 11725 kWh

Kilowatt Hour
Most power companies measure electric energy in kilowatt hours (kWh). One kilowatt
hour is the total energy supplied to a 1000 W load during 1 hour of operation.

Most appliances have a power marked on them telling you how many watts they use
while active. Larger appliances like stoves or refrigerators have labels that tell you how
much energy in kWh they use in a typical year of operation.
Sample Problem
A family uses 3000 kWh of electric energy in a two-month period. If the energy costs
11.0 cents per kilowatt hour, what is the electric bill for the period?

How much energy in kWh is used by a 750 W heater if it operates for 8 hours?
Efficiency
The law of conservation of energy tells us that energy cannot be created or destroyed,
it is always transformed from one form to another. For example a lightbulb
transforming electric energy into light. However we know that light bulbs also produce
heat. The efficiency of a device is the percentage of electric energy that is transformed
into the intended form of energy and not lost as heat or some other form of energy.

No real device is 100% efficient

Sample Problem
A 1000 W electric kettle takes 4.00 min to boil some water. If it takes 1.96 X 105 J
(196 000 J) of energy to heat the water, what is the efficiency of the kettle?

A 60 W lightbulb produces 9.9 X 105 J (990000 J) of heat in 5 hours, what is the

efficiency of the lightbulb?