ABSTRACT
Electricity. What is it? Water and wastewater operators generally have little difficulty in recognizing electrical equipment. Electrical equipment is everywhere and is easy to spot; for example, typical plant sites are outfitted with equipment to:
• Generate electricity (a generator or emergency generator)
• Store electricity (batteries) • Change electricity from one form to another
(transformers) • Transport or transmit and distribute electricity
throughout the plant site (wiring distribution systems)
• Measure electricity (meters) • Convert electricity into other forms of energy
(mechanical energy, heat energy, light energy, chemical energy, or radio energy)
• Protect other electrical equipment (fuses, circuit breakers, or relays)
• Operate and control other electrical equipment (motor controllers)
• Convert some condition or occurrence into an electric signal (sensors)
• Convert some measured variable to a representative electrical signal (transducers or transmitters)
Recognizing electrical equipment is easy because we use so much of it. If we ask typical operators where such equipment is located in their plant site, they know, because they probably operate these devices or their ancillaries. If we asked these same operators what a particular electrical device does, they could probably tell us. If we were to ask if their plant electrical equipment was important to plant operations, the chorus would resound “absolutely.”
