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Category
Electric power systems
Summary
An electric power system is a network of electrical components deployed to supply, transfer, and use electric power. An example of a power system is the electrical grid that provides power to homes and industries within an extended area. The electrical grid can be broadly divided into the generators that supply the power, the transmission system that carries the power from the generating centers to the load centers, and the distribution system that feeds the power to nearby homes and industries.
Smaller power systems are also found in industry, hospitals, commercial buildings, and homes. A single line diagram helps to represent this whole system. The majority of these systems rely upon three-phase AC power—the standard for large-scale power transmission and distribution across the modern world. Specialized power systems that do not always rely upon three-phase AC power are found in aircraft, electric rail systems, ocean liners, submarines, and automobiles.
In 1881, two electricians built the world's first power system at Godalming in England. It was powered by two water wheels and produced an alternating current that in turn supplied seven Siemens arc lamps at 250 volts and 34 incandescent lamps at 40 volts. However, supply to the lamps was intermittent and in 1882 Thomas Edison and his company, Edison Electric Light Company, developed the first steam-powered electric power station on Pearl Street in New York City. The Pearl Street Station initially powered around 3,000 lamps for 59 customers. The power station generated direct current and operated at a single voltage. Direct current power could not be transformed easily or efficiently to the higher voltages necessary to minimize power loss during long-distance transmission, so the maximum economic distance between the generators and load was limited to around half a mile (800 m).
That same year in London, Lucien Gaulard and John Dixon Gibbs demonstrated the "secondary generator"—the first transformer suitable for use in a real power system.
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