Without much thought we plug our stuff into the wall socket and never think twice about what it really is. Granted we are upset when the power goes out, worried about lightning strikes and annoyed when someone shocks us with static electricity. While looking into conserving electricity I began to learn a bit more about the terms and concepts about electricity.
The term electricity can speak about a wide range of things but for the most part when talking about conservation and the power in our house we’re talking about an electric current. Electric current is when charged particles (most often electrons) move. In a conventional current electrons move from the most positive to the most negative charge.
Before I get too much farther it helps to think of electric current as water flowing through a hose. Technically there’s a bit more to it but for this case we’re pretty much ok.
When electricity travels through something such as a wire it’s call conduction. A related term is conductor which is the material that the current is passing though. Different materials have different resistance to letting electricity through. Most metals and water as you probably know are GREAT conductors while rubber and plastic are not. Think of the empty place in the middle of the hose where the water goes through as the conductor.
There are two types of current in peoples houses, direct current (DC) or alternating current(AC). DC is what comes from batteries or the black boxes you often see on phone chargers. DC moves in one direction. AC is what we get from the outlets in our house. AC current moves back and forth never really getting anywhere (i.e. two steps forward two steps back).
There are several terms used to measure electric current. Each are related to the other and can be converted quite easily.
The first is ampere or amp. You can often see this listed on electrical devices by a number and an A. The actual technical definition of an amp is pretty complex but simply put an amp is a certain amount of electrical current. The average home usually has about 100A service. This means that you can pull 100A of power at a time(TIME is a factor in this). An amp would be the equivalent of gallons per minute in our hose.
Next is a Volt(V). A volt is the potential difference that the electric charge must have to do something. With the hose it would be the pressure of the water in the hose. Low voltage = Low Pressure.
A Watt(W) is the amount of energy used or the amount of push needed to run something or the amount of amps(gallons per minute) multiplied by the volts(pressure). If you think of a water wheel at the end of the hose, volts would be how much water at what pressure would turn it. If you dump a LOT of water slowly or a little water under high pressure the wheel will turn.
Now your electric company sells you power using Kilowatt Hours. This is the amount of work(1,000 watts) over time(hours). This would be the amount of spinning the water wheel does over time.
Finally there is the term Hertz which is a measure of frequency and is only used for Alternating Current(AC). This is the amount of times that something goes back and forth in 1 second in this case the direction of the current. In North America we use 60Hz most of the rest of the world uses 50Hz.
So there you have it a bunch of terms about electricity. In a future post I’ll go over using these terms and measurements to convert and measure your electrical usage.