Electric Supply

A good electric supply is one of those things which we, in the western world, just take for granted don’t we? If, for any reason we are without electricity for more than a nano-second, (you know, just long enough to make all of your digital clocks need to be re-set and your computer to crash) then our whole world falls apart. How can you clean the floor without a vacuum? How can you make coffee? What if it gets dark, our candles are for fragrance and mood lighting, not so that we can actually see anything?  Yes, we’ve turned into a nation of electric-a-holics – there I go again, making up words, but you know what I mean.

So where does our electric supply come from, apart from the socket in the wall?

In the United States, our electric supply, or “mains” electric has loads of other names too:

• household electricity
• household power
• wall power
• powerline
• domestic power
• city power
• AC power
• line power
• grid power
• street power

whatever kind of power you like to call it, it’s the power to keep our lives running comfortably and conveniently.

Danger – High Voltage

We all rely on our electric supplies so much that we tend to forget just how dangerous this electricity stuff can be. They put danger signs onto power cables for a reason you know – did you know that electricity can jump so you don’t even have to be touching them to get hurt, and the higher voltage, the further it can jump. You have been warned.

Household Electric Supply

The household power used in most countries is what’s known as single-phase electricity, and there are generally two or three wires at the outlet.

* Live wire – is responsible for carrying the alternating current between the grid and the house (and likes parties)
* Neutral wire – is there to complete the circuit, also carrying the alternating current between the grid and the house but also staked to the ground every now and then so that it has the same electrical charge as the earth, preventing it from rising up from the ground whenever there’s a lightening strike – that sort of thing. Imagine that!
* Earth wire – is responsible for connecting the equipment to the earth and thereby protecting us from electric shocks

Of course, some people who have houses which are in the middle of nowhere or not close enough to the electric grid system need to provide their own electric supply. Generators can be used for this purpose (and are also very useful for providing power for power tools etc, when you are working far away from a socket).

Other sources of environmentally friendly electric supply include:

* solar power, which has really come on in leaps and bounds over the past few years, especially in countries where they get plenty of sunshine. If you open your very own solar farm and have more electricity than you can use yourself, you can even sell it back to the national grid for other people – but you need a lot of panels and a few million dollars to start off with so it’s a non-starter for many of us – pity.
* wind power, have you seen the majestic armies of wind turbines spinning slowly in the breeze. Personally I think they’re beautiful, but many others find them a bit of an eyesore – there’s no accounting for taste.
* wave power, the sea is so powerful, why not harness some of that power for our own use. The tides keep crashing on the shores whether we like it or not, so why not use some of the energy? It makes good sense don’t you think?