How does electricity reaches our home

It travels through distribution lines to your neighborhood. Smaller transformers reduce the voltage again to make the power safe to use in our homes. It connects to your house and passes through a meter that measures how much your family uses. The electricity goes to the service panel in your basement or garage, where breakers or fuses protect the wires inside your house from being overloaded.

Never touch a service panel! It is only to be operated by your parents or a professional. Electricity travels fast — about , kilometres per second. If you moved that fast, you could probably make several trips around the world in the time it takes to turn on a light! Sometimes, when electricity has to travel a long way it gets a little weaker as it moves along the lines. It needs a boost like you need food to replace the energy you've burned after playing outside all day.

That's where substations help. Substations are large box-like power transformers that sit in fenced-in areas. You'll see signs on the fences that say "high voltage — stay away".

It's really important that you obey those signs remember what you learned about electricity being able to travel easily through your body. When wires reach your house, another transformer on the power pole makes the electricity just the right voltage so you can use it safely. The wire is connected to a meter box that keeps track of how much electricity is being used.

There are wires in your house connected to plugs, also called outlets. These outlets let you plug in your boombox, television set, or any thing else electrical. What an amazing journey electricity takes to get to your home! Why Serve Mines? How Electricity Gets to You It's hard to imagine our homes without electricity.

But what is electricity? How do power plants work? Once the power has been created, it then needs to start moving out towards its final destination — your home. The electricity leaves the power station, usually through overhead lines, and makes its way to a large substation. These are normally located not too far from the power station. Here at the substation, the voltage of the electricity is increased. This is achieved with the use of transformers.

This helps the electricity to travel longer distances and reach its destination without losing too much current. The electricity then leaves the first substation via overhead power transmission lines supported by pylons, or via underground cables.

These are carrying electricity from the initial substation to smaller substations around the area.