There are many situations where we need to change the voltage of the electricity we are working with. Whether we need to turn the voltage up or down, over long or short distances, we use step up transformers and step-down transformers to accomplish this. How do these transformers work, and how can they help you in your event, project, or facility?
Why Do We Use Step Up and Step Down Transformers?
Before we explain how they work, it will be useful for you to know why we might use step up or down transformers. The most common reason we use these is to transfer electricity over long distances. Power plants cannot always be conveniently located near consumers of electricity. So, the electricity must be sent from a power plant to the end consumer.
However, when it is sent over long distances, electricity drops in voltage. In order to counter this effect, we must increase its voltage before the journey. We use step-up transformers to increase the voltage, then we transfer the electricity. Now, before the electricity can be used by homes, factories and other consumers it must be brought back down to the correct voltage. We use stepdown transformers of distribution transformers for this purpose.
How Does a Step Up or Step Down Transformer Work?
Transformers are made of two or more coils of wire wrapped around an iron core. You can imagine this as two iron posts, with wires wrapped around both posts. When we run electricity through the first pole, it induces a new voltage in the second pole. The exact voltage you end up with depends on how many times the wires are wrapped around the two poles.
When you think of a step up transformer you could think of a machine that makes cheese strings. It takes separate pieces of cheese and winds it together to make a thicker piece of cheese. Step down transformers then unwind the cheese string, making them the exact thickness (in this metaphor, that’s voltage) that you need.