Lectures on Physics has been derived from Benjamin Crowell's Light and Matter series of free introductory textbooks on physics. See the editorial for more information....

Choice of high voltage for power lines

Thomas Edison got involved in a famous technological controversy over the voltage difference that should be used for electrical power lines. At this time, the public was unfamiliar with electricity, and easily scared by it. The president of the United States, for instance, refused to have electrical lighting in the White House when it first became commercially available because he considered it unsafe, preferring the known fire hazard of oil lamps to the mysterious dangers of electricity. Mainly as a way to overcome public fear, Edison believed that power should be transmitted using small voltages, and he publicized his opinion by giving demonstrations at which a dog was lured into position to be killed by a large voltage difference between two sheets of metal on the ground. (Edison's opponents also advocated alternating current rather than direct current, and AC is more dangerous than DC as well. As we will discuss later, AC can be easily stepped up and down to the desired voltage level using a device called a transformer.)

Now if we want to deliver a certain amount of power PL to a load such as an electric lightbulb, we are constrained only by the equation PL=IΔVL. We can deliver any amount of power we wish, even with a low voltage, if we are willing to use large currents. Modern electrical distribution networks, however, use dangerously high voltage differences of tens of thousands of volts. Why did Edison lose the debate?

It boils down to money. The electric company must deliver the amount of power PL desired by the customer through a transmission line whose resistance RT is fixed by economics and geography. The same current flows through both the load and the transmission line, dissipating power usefully in the former and wastefully in the latter. The efficiency of the system is

Putting ourselves in the shoes of the electric company, we wish to get rid of the variable PT, since it is something we control only indirectly by our choice of ΔVT and I. Substituting PT=IΔVT, we find

We assume the transmission line (but not necessarily the load) is ohmic, so substituting ΔVT = IRT gives

This quantity can clearly be maximized by making I as small as possible, since we will then be dividing by the smallest possible quantity on the bottom of the fraction. A low-current circuit can only deliver significant amounts of power if it uses high voltages, which is why electrical transmission systems use dangerous high voltages.




Last Update: 2010-11-11