From the Grid to Your Home: Electricity Transmission Step-By-Step

Electricity is integral to modern life, powering everything from our homes to our electronic devices. However, few of us consider the complex journey it takes from its source to the locations where we use it. 

This article explores the stages electricity goes through to reach our homes, including what happens at each step. We’ll provide insights into this essential infrastructure that supports our daily lives and helps us understand the environmental impacts and choices we face regarding energy sources.

Let’s get started.

What Are the Stages of Electricity Transmission?

How Does Grid Power Work?

Your electricity is generated at a power generation plant, and from there, it moves through a system that we typically refer to as “the grid.” The grid is a complex series of high-voltage powerlines, substations, transformers, and low-voltage powerlines that bring electricity from the power plant to your home.  

In the USA, this complex network contains thousands of miles of high-voltage lines that move vast quantities of energy between plants, substations, and the residential and commercial areas that need power. From there, millions of miles of low-voltage distribution lines deliver electricity to homes and businesses.  

Let’s look further at each of these essential components. 

Power Plants: The Source of Electricity

Electricity comes from various sources that utilize different processes. Where your electrical comes from depends on where you live and what is available there. For example, utility companies in areas with large rivers often use hydropower, while those in deserts increasingly use solar farms because of the abundant sunshine.

However, in the USA, a significant amount of our electricity comes from non-renewable fossil fuels like coal and natural gas. Coal and natural gas use combustion to create energy, like it does in our car’s engine, but on a much larger scale. However, unlike our car, where energy produces motion, steam is created in a boiler. That steam then spins turbines to power a generator, turning mechanical energy into electrical energy. 

Unfortunately, it also produces greenhouse gases, with coal being especially problematic. According to the US EPA, coal accounted for 20% of the electricity we generated in 2022 but was responsible for 55% of carbon dioxide emissions from the electricity sector that same year. 

Nuclear Power

Nuclear power is another non-renewable fuel source that utilizes the vast amounts of heat released from splitting radioactive uranium atoms, known as nuclear fission. That heat is then used to heat water at high pressures and mixed with cold water to create steam that spins turbines to power a generator that produces electricity. 

While it might not produce greenhouse gas emissions, the spent uranium presents a serious environmental hazard. Their operation carries dangerous risks, like the meltdown in Fukushima after the 2011 earthquake in Japan. 

Renewable Energy

Increasingly, we use more renewable energy for electricity, including hydropower, geothermal, wind, and solar. These sources are limitless, clean, and produce little to no greenhouse gases.

Hydropower utilizes turbines that are turned as water flows through them. This collects the kinetic energy from the movement of the water. As the turbine blades turn, electromagnets in a generator rotate to create electricity. Wind works in a similar manner, using turbine blades to collect the kinetic energy from the wind to turn a drive shaft that turns an electric generator to create electricity. 

Geothermal uses steam or hot water from deep within the Earth to spin turbines that power a generator to create electrical energy. 

Solar is a different process that utilizes semiconductors, such as silicon, in solar cells that interact with photons, a form of electromagnetic radiation from the Sun. The semiconductors capture the photons, releasing electrons that flow as a one-way DC current. From there, it runs through an inverter to create AC electricity for our homes. 

One of the nice things about solar power is that it can be done on a large scale through solar farms powering hundreds or thousands of homes or small-scale residential solar. Residential users can also choose between on-grid and off-grid systems. 

For instance, an EcoFlow Solar Generator is a residential system that includes solar panels and a portable power station like the EcoFlow DELTA Series Portable Power Stations, which come in various sizes and capacities to supply power to small off-grid homes to the largest, most power-hungry homes. 

Transmission Substations

After the production plant, the electricity enters a transmission substation, which converts it into extremely high voltages, between 115,000 and 500,000V. It enables it to travel more efficiently via high-voltage lines. 

High Voltage Transmission Lines

These are designed to carry enormous amounts of energy between power-generating plants and the various substations. Sometimes, the utility owns the generation plant; other times, it purchases power from different plants. Either way, high-voltage energy is transmitted along high-voltage transmission lines to the distribution substations. 

Distribution Substations

Generated or purchased electrical energy arrives at the distribution substations via those high-voltage transmission lines. This substation is the point where the grid infrastructure changes from transmission to distribution. It steps down that high voltage using a power transformer.   

Power Transformer

The power transformer receives electricity at high voltage and steps it down to a lower but still relatively high voltage, to 25,000 or 13,200 volts, before sending it to the distribution network. 

Distribution Lines

After it leaves the power transformer, the energy is transmitted along distribution lines. These are the ones you see running up and down the sides of our roads and highways, and this is how the electricity reaches our neighborhoods and homes. 

Distribution Transformer

At this stage, the voltage is still much too high for your home. So again, it is stepped down through a distribution transformer that is located on a pole near your home. Here it steps it down to 120V or 240V, which is the standard voltage we use in household electricity. 

Service Wire

After the distribution transformer, a service wire is used to connect the electricity to your house; this step is called the service drop. There it connects to a meter that the electricity companies use to determine your household usage so that they know how much to bill you.  

Household Electricity

Next, a wire runs from your meter box to your breaker box. The breaker box is critical for safety since it will ‘trip’ a breaker if there is an overload or some kind of electrical fault in your house rather than keep pushing electricity through a fault where it could cause a fire. 

Your household wiring runs from the breaker box through your walls and ceilings to the plugs and light switches that power your appliances and devices. 

Those wanting independence from the grid and its outages or dirty fuels can go off-grid entirely with solar power. In that case, your electricity would simply travel from your solar panels to your household breaker box, efficiently eliminating all the long-distance travel. 

EcoFlow Portable Power Stations come in a wide range of energy capacities. They come in small, portable ones meant for travel, larger ones to supplement grid power or small off-grid homes, and still larger ones that have enough capacity to run even the largest and most energy-intensive household. 

For instance, the EcoFlow DELTA Pro 3 starts at 4kWh per battery, which is enough for most small homes. However, you can easily add additional batteries to obtain 36 kWh of storage and a maximum AC output of 8kW or 12kW when you chain 2-3 EcoFlow DELTA Pro 3s together. It’s more than enough to power almost any home. 

However, if you have a large home with heavy power usage, charging EVs, etc., the EcoFlow DELTA Pro Ultra starts at 6kWh. With extra batteries, it can store up to 90kWh. It has 7.2kW of continuous AC output and 10.8kW of peak output for 10 seconds, which helps cover the starting watts of certain appliances. 

If you still need more, you can expand your AC output up to 21.6kW when you connect three inverters to draw more power simultaneously from storage. 

Frequently Asked Questions

Final Thoughts

The journey of electricity from power plants to our homes is a complex process that involves multiple stages, each crucial for delivering it safely and efficiently. From the diverse energy sources at power plants to the intricate workings of transmission lines and substations, this infrastructure shapes how we use electricity in our daily lives. 

As we move toward a more sustainable future, exploring solar power can help us become more energy-independent and reduce our environmental footprint. The EcoFlow Portable Power Stations come in various capacities, from supplying energy for travel to providing enough to run large off-grid homes, making renewable options accessible to anyone.