9781422271445

1 Chapter

What Do Electricians Do?

What is Electricity? Electricity is defined by the US Energy Information Administration (US EIA) as “the flow of electrical power or charge.” This form of energy is also part of nature, being found in lightning and electrical charges in the atmosphere. Electricity is categorized as a secondary energy because it must be created by converting other sources of energy. These primary sources are either renewable (solar, wind, geothermal, hydropower, etc.) or nonrenewable (coal, natural gas, oil). Electricity is generated at power plants. Then it is sent to end users, also known as customers , through a series of electric grids, an interconnected group of electricity generators, high-power transmission wires, and lower-power distribution wires. “In the United States, the entire electricity grid consists of hundreds of thousands of miles of high-voltage power lines and millions of miles of low-voltage power lines with distribution transformers that connect thousands of power plants to hundreds of millions of electricity customers all across the country,” according to the US EIA.

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