Tour of a Power Substation

Ever wondered what it looks like inside one of those power substations near your house, or what exactly the strange-looking wires, tubes, and boxes are for? Here's your chance to venture inside the fence and check it out.

A power substation does not generate electricity, but rather is a stop on the way from the power plant to your home. Electricity comes from power plants in very high voltages and it is the job of the substation to "step it down" -- that is, lower the voltage for distribution on ordinary power lines like the ones feeding your house.

Transformers perform just that function: they "transform" the energy from one voltage into another. Huge transformers like the one on the right are needed for the kinds of voltages encountered on lines from power plants. The black-and-white things on top are fancy high-voltage insulators, which are designed to keep the electricity in the wires instead of "leaking" into the ground.

The pictures below show more instances of transformers and insulators.

Next page: Fixing a transformer -->

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