I work with equipment that operates on three phase electrical circuits. I can’t get my head around the concept of “phases.”
In: 17
In electricity, a phase refers to the distribution of a load. there is two-phase and three-phase. Think of it as a group of people working together to get a job done. in 2 phase, two people work together to get the job done. in three phase, three paper are working to get the job done. in essence, three phase will be more efficient because load is distributed to three people compared to 2 in 2-phase.
therefore, a three-phase power supply better accommodates higher loads and is mostly used in commercial and industrial facilities while 2 phase is used for domestic purposes.
A wrong answer for the sake of ELI5.
Imagine you’re rowing a boat. You have half of the stroke pushing against the water propelling the boat forward, but the other half of the stroke the boat isn’t actually being propelled forward since you’re picking up the oars and getting ready for a 2nd stroke.
Imagine if you add a 2nd rower to the boat who times his rows to “push” while yours are pulling. Now the boat will be propelled twice as much in the same amount of time as the original stroke.
Add a 3rd rower and you have 3 phase power.
Phases are your “hot” wires.
Are you in the US? Your workplace likely runs a 480V/277V system.
Each phase carries 277V. And your equipment can be made to run on a hot and neutral. But, the higher the voltage the smaller the wire can be so it is desirable to run equipment at the highest safe-ish voltage possible to keep components smaller.
(That is why high voltage lines are not 6′ in diameter even though the feed a city)
Each phase moves in a wave from +277V to 0V to -277V and so on. But the waves peak at different moments in time on each phase so connecting phase to phase instead of phase to neutral gives you 480V.
“But 277+277 is 554, not 480!” you say.
Take a peek at how the waves go. Pick a peak of any wave, look straight down at where another phase is. You’ll see the other phase isn’t peaked in the negative so you get 480V instead of 554V.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/cc/3_phase_AC_waveform.svg/1280px-3_phase_AC_waveform.svg.png
Single phase works the same, except 120V/240V and the math is simpler because the phases peak at the same time.
https://www.hvacrschool.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/240v-waveform.png
Electricity is a wild science.
FYI, when you look at a light it is actually off 60 times per second and your slow human brain just doesn’t process it. *POOF!* mind blown.
Let me take a whack at it. This is also not precise but I think none of the answers are actually ELI5.
Let’s say I make a one way toll route to a super cool place that electrons want to go. Like the Disneyland of electrons. Each one drives by and pays me a little bit of energy tokens that I can use. This is kind of what happens in DC circuits, right?
Well, what if I make a two way toll route and advertise my super cool electron attraction so all of them go this way, and then advertise another attraction on the side they were! After that I keep alternating so they’re motivated to keep crossing. Then they would pass the toll, then turn around and go the other way, then turn around and do it again. So I’d still be making energy tokens even if they don’t get anywhere. Now let’s say my toll employees need a steady income and the problem with this system is that everyone is full force going one way and we make a lot, then news gets out and everyone turns around and in between there’s a period of a low season, where they’re just turning around.
To solve this problem, i divide them into two groups, and tell them where the coolest attraction is at different times so when the first group is turning around, the second group is going full force in one direction. This way I have less peaks of busy times and nadirs of low seasons. This is two phase electricity.
But it’s still a little uneven. I can smooth the whole thing out by adding more complexity but apparently for what I want to do three groups of electrons being motivated to move at different times is enough to keep my steady flow. That’s three phrase electricity.
imagine electricity as a wave and there is a limit to how much of that wave you can force down a wire. But, if you could start another wave, in between when the first one starts and ends, you can get more power down the same line with less loss.