Hey everyone,
I’m getting into electric speciality and, to be honest, never understood (made it clear in my head) how does AC or DC work, why there are three/single phases used?
by „Make clear in my head” I mean I generally have some knowledge, but couldn’t be able to explain it to somebody else. Thanks!
In: 5
* DC power is like a chain saw.
* It does work by forcing charge carriers through the wire smashing into things along the way.
* AC power is like a reciprocating saw where the teeth move back and forth very quickly.
* You can still do a lot of work that way.
* You can also convert that back and forth motion into straight ahead motion too.
* Single phase AC is just normal regular AC power.
* The voltage swings from 0V to +120V, down to -120V, and then back to 0V.
* It has a line or “hot” leg paired with a neutral leg and a ground leg.
* Three-phase power is the same as single phase except there are two additional “hot” legs that each share the same neutral and ground legs.
* They can share neutral and ground because their phase (fancy term for *when* they swing from 0, +120,-120,0) is sightly off-set from each other and if they are all loaded equally, the current going back down the neutral leg cancels out to 0A.
* Also you can use two of the hot legs instead of a hot and neutral and you can get 208V, which is not quite 240V but is close enough for some devices that need higher voltage.
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