ECE major here that slept through all his power classes. Say I have a basic single-phase generator like the kind you get at Home Depot. If I have long string of irons and light bulbs (essentially purely resistive loads) and draw more than the rated wattage, what happens? My intuition says that the engine must work harder, but what is the specific mechanism that causes this.
In: Engineering
Current flowing through the coils of a generator makes an magnetic field. The more current, the stronger the magnetic field. The higher the load, the more current. This magnetic field is opposite to the one generated by the magnets of the generator.
The gasoline motor is trying to move the magnets past the magnetic field generated the the coil. The stronger this field is, the more work the gasoline motor needs to do.
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