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Alternating Current: (This Material Relates Predominantly To Module ELP032)

Alternating current (AC) is electricity that switches polarity or direction back and forth over time, as opposed to direct current (DC) which flows in one direction. While DC is easy to understand, AC is more commonly used due to its advantages. AC allows for more efficient electric generators and motors compared to DC equivalents. It also allows for flexible transmission of power using different voltages. Therefore, AC has been widely adopted for high power applications worldwide, though DC remains useful for some specialized uses like long-distance power cables.

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20 views1 page

Alternating Current: (This Material Relates Predominantly To Module ELP032)

Alternating current (AC) is electricity that switches polarity or direction back and forth over time, as opposed to direct current (DC) which flows in one direction. While DC is easy to understand, AC is more commonly used due to its advantages. AC allows for more efficient electric generators and motors compared to DC equivalents. It also allows for flexible transmission of power using different voltages. Therefore, AC has been widely adopted for high power applications worldwide, though DC remains useful for some specialized uses like long-distance power cables.

Uploaded by

Vanesa Jeronimo
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Foundation Electrical Engineering: Basic AC Theory Kuphaldt

1. Alternating Current
1.1 Why Alternating Current?

[This material relates predominantly to module ELP032]

As useful and as easy to understand as DC is, it is not the only "kind" of electricity in use.
Certain sources of electricity (most notably, rotary electro-mechanical generators)
naturally produce voltages alternating in polarity, reversing positive and negative over
time. Either as a voltage switching polarity or as a current switching direction back and
forth, this "kind" of electricity is known as Alternating Current (AC):

Whereas the familiar battery symbol is used as a generic symbol for any DC voltage
source, a circle with a wavy line inside is the generic symbol for any AC voltage source.

One might wonder why anyone would bother with such a thing as AC. It is true that in
some cases AC holds no practical advantage over DC. In applications where electricity is
used to dissipate energy in the form of heat, the polarity or direction of current is
irrelevant. However, with AC it is possible to build electric generators and motors that are
far more efficient than the DC equivalents and it is possible to use a variety of voltages in
the transmission and distribution of electrical energy (a very important issue to be
discussed in the module ELP032). So AC has been adopted across the world in high power
applications (although DC is used for special cases of bulk power transfer through high
voltage cables). To explain the details of why this is so, background knowledge about AC
is necessary.

If a machine is constructed to rotate a magnetic field around a set of stationary wire coils
with the turning of a shaft, AC voltage will be produced across the wire coils as that shaft

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