Abstract
Electric power has become indispensable to most people in the world. It is transmitted either as direct current (DC) or as alternating current (AC). DC power is used to transfer large blocks of electric power at high voltage levels over long overhead lines or through underground or undersea cables. A significant amount of the AC power delivered to consumers is converted to DC before it is used to operate power electronic devices and various industrial processes, but DC power cannot be transformed to a higher or lower DC voltage level without first being converted to AC in an intermediate step. Consequently, AC power has become the dominating technology for transmitting and distributing the generated electric power to the end users.
This chapter discusses the basic characteristics of AC electric power generation, transmission, and utilization. In order to do this, the fundamental scientific discoveries and concepts are presented, and some of the engineers and scientists and their contributions to the development of electric power systems are also discussed.
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Notes
- 1.
Many scientists worked on making incandescent light sources beginning with Sir Humphry Davy in England in 1802. Sir Joseph Swan and Thomas Edison both made major breakthroughs on the design of electric light bulbs in 1877–1879, but the Edison vacuum light bulb with a carbon filament was the first practical, relatively reliable light bulb that made it into the market. http://edisontechcenter.org/incandescent.html#inventors
- 2.
Sir Humphry Davy constructed the first arc lamp (1807), using a battery of 2,000 cells to create a 100-millimeter (4-inch) arc between two charcoal sticks. When suitable electric generators became available in the late 1870s, the practical use of arc lamps began. The Yablochkov candle, an arc lamp invented by the Russian engineer Paul Yablochkov, was used for street lighting in Paris and other European cities from 1878. https://www.britannica.com/technology/arc-lamp
- 3.
Faraday also determined the speed of light.
- 4.
These equations should be well known to all who have taken elementary physics and mathematical courses. The equations are valid for quasi-stationary electrical systems only (no radiation). They are just repeated here as an introduction to the development of the requirements for power system design and operation.
- 5.
The Laplace transform was invented by the French mathematician Pierre-Simon Laplace (1749–1827), and systematically developed by the British physicist Oliver Heaviside (1850–1925), to simplify the solution of many differential equations. https://www.britannica.com/science/Laplace-transform
- 6.
The transformer makes use of the induction effect discovered and demonstrated in 1821 by Michael Faraday.
- 7.
EMTP is the name for a commercial program, but an alternative transients program (ATP) and systems in which EMTP is embedded, such as PSCAD, are available.
- 8.
An electromagnetic wave travels one third of a meter per nanosecond in vacuum and slightly less along a conductor. Also, a wave traveling between a conductor and ground travels slower than a wave traveling between two conductors.
- 9.
The star denotes the conjugate of the terms within the bracket.
- 10.
An infinite source is a generator whose output voltage does not change irrespective of changes to the load.
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Nilsson, S., Lima, M., Young, D.J. (2020). AC System Characteristics. In: Nilsson, S. (eds) Flexible AC Transmission Systems . CIGRE Green Books. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71926-9_2-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71926-9_2-2
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AC System Characteristics- Published:
- 03 March 2020
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71926-9_2-2
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AC System Characteristics- Published:
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71926-9_2-1