Electricity 101: The Flip of a Switch

Have you ever wondered why they call it electricity? It’s named after tiny parts of atoms called electrons, and that’s the place to start in understanding how power plants make the electricity that reliably lights your home with the flip of a switch.

Getting all those electrons to march together inside a wire may be 1 of civilization’s greatest and most complex engineering feats.

Just about all electricity generation starts with spinning a magnet inside a coil of wires. Inside most power plants are large turbines that accomplish this in different ways: falling water at a hydroelectric dam, burning coal or natural gas at a fossil fuel station, atomic energy at a nuclear power plant, or the rotating blades of a wind turbine.

1 exception is solar energy, which uses materials that produce electricity when they’re activated by sunlight.

Every 1 of those power plants is unimaginably complicated— think about what you would do if you were handed a lump of coal and were told to make it run your refrigerator.

Most large electric generating plants need large banks of transformers to boost the voltage for the long trip through wires held up by transmission lines and towers. As it nears your neighborhood, the voltage is reduced at 1 of those fenced-in complexes of wires and transformers called a substation.

As the electricity gets closer to your home or business, the voltage is reduced again with smaller transformers, which you can typically see mounted on a nearby utility pole or in a ground-level green box. This ensures the electricity entering your home is at a safe voltage for powering your lights, appliances, and devices.

When you think about it, that’s a lot of power in the simple flip of a switch.