While both AC and DC current deliver electricity, the way in which that electricity arrives at its end destination differs.
What are your appliances and electronics eating? Homes and businesses across the nation will continue to be powered predominantly by AC power. With the rise of LEDs, solar cells, electric vehicles, and mobile electronics, however, advancements in DC are on the rise, with methods continually under development for transporting and converting DC to higher and lower voltages with less electricity loss.
The couple working side-by-side in homes and businesses across the U. Give peace a chance with an electrical box or service upgrade from Mr. Electric today. These devices can affect the way the alternating current passes through a circuit. They are only effective with AC electricity. A combination of a capacitor, inductor and resistor is used as a tuner in radios and televisions. Without those devices, tuning to different stations would be very difficult. We commonly use AC electricity to power our television, lights and computers.
In AC electricity, the current alternates in direction. AC electricity was proven to be better for supplying electricity than DC, primarily because the voltages can be transformed. AC also allows for other devices to be used, opening a wide range of applications. Elements of AC Electricity - Basic electronics tutorial site.
Alternating Current - Overview of AC. Top-rated books on Basic Electricity. Top-rated books on AC Electricity. Do you have any questions, comments, or opinions on this subject? If so, send an email with your feedback. I will try to get back to you as soon as possible. Click on a button to bookmark or share this page through Twitter, Facebook, email, or other services:.
AC can be converted to and from high voltages easily using transformers. AC is also capable of powering electric motors. Motors and generators are the exact same device, but motors convert electrical energy into mechanical energy if the shaft on a motor is spun, a voltage is generated at the terminals! This is useful for many large appliances like dishwashers, refrigerators, and so on, which run on AC. Direct current is a bit easier to understand than alternating current.
Rather than oscillating back and forth, DC provides a constant voltage or current. The tank can only push water one way: out the hose. Similar to our DC-producing battery, once the tank is empty, water no longer flows through the pipes.
DC is defined as the "unidirectional" flow of current; current only flows in one direction. Voltage and current can vary over time so long as the direction of flow does not change. To simplify things, we will assume that voltage is a constant. For example, we assume that a AA battery provides 1.
What does this mean? It means that we can count on most DC sources to provide a constant voltage over time. In reality, a battery will slowly lose its charge, meaning that the voltage will drop as the battery is used. For most purposes, we can assume that the voltage is constant.
Almost all electronics projects and parts for sale on SparkFun run on DC. Examples of DC electronics include:. Almost every home and business is wired for AC.
However, this was not an overnight decision. In the late s, a variety of inventions across the United States and Europe led to a full-scale battle between alternating current and direct current distribution. Thomas Edison, on the other hand, had constructed DC power stations in the United States by A turning point in the battle came when George Westinghouse, a famous industrialist from Pittsburgh, purchased Nikola Tesla's patents for AC motors and transmission the next year.
Thomas Edison Image courtesy of biography. In the late s, DC could not be easily converted to high voltages. As a result, Edison proposed a system of small, local power plants that would power individual neighborhoods or city sections. Even though the voltage drop across the power lines was accounted for, power plants needed to be located within 1 mile of the end user.
This limitation made power distribution in rural areas extremely difficult, if not impossible. With Tesla's patents, Westinghouse worked to perfect the AC distribution system. Transformers provided an inexpensive method to step up the voltage of AC to several thousand volts and back down to usable levels.
At higher voltages, the same power could be transmitted at much lower current, which meant less power lost due to resistance in the wires. As a result, large power plants could be located many miles away and service a greater number of people and buildings.
Over the next few years, Edison ran a campaign to highly discourage the use of AC in the United States, which included lobbying state legislatures and spreading disinformation about AC. Edison also directed several technicians to publicly electrocute animals with AC in an attempt to show that AC was more dangerous than DC. In attempt to display these dangers, Harold P. In , the International Electro-Technical Exhibition was held in Frankfurt, Germany and displayed the first long distance transmission of three-phase AC, which powered lights and motors at the exhibition.
Several representatives from what would become General Electric were present and were subsequently impressed by the display. The following year, General Electric formed and began to invest in AC technology.
Westinghouse won a contract in to build a hydroelectric dam to harness the power of Niagara falls and transmit AC to Buffalo, NY. The project was completed on November 16, and AC power began to power industries in Buffalo. This milestone marked the decline of DC in the United States. However, due to the high cost and maintenance of the Thury systems, HVDC was never adopted for almost a century.
With the invention of semiconductor electronics in the s, economically transforming between AC and DC became possible. Specialized equipment could be used to generate high voltage DC power some reaching kV.
0コメント